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WOMEN AND WAR WORK 



Women and War Work 



HELEN FRASER 



No easy hopes or lies 
Shall lead us to our goal ; 
But iron sacrifice 
Of Body, Will, and Soul 
There is but one task for all 
For each one life to give. 
Who stands if Freedom fall 

Rudyard Kipling in "For All We Have and Are." 




1918 

G. ARNOLD SHAW 

NEW YORK 



33 633 



Copyright 1918 
By G. Arnold Shaw 



Copyright in Great Britain 
and the Colonies 






JAN 26 1918 



©CLA481538 



DEDICATED 

TO 

MOTHER, 

ANNE, 
AND THE BOYS. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

1. The Spirit op Women 19 

2. Organization and Its Pitfalls 35 

3. Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D 53 

4. Bringing Blighty to the Soldiers — Huts, 

Comforts, Etc 73 

5. Woman-Power for Man-Power 91 

6. Women and Munitions 109 

7. The Protection of Women in Industry . . . 131 

8. "The Women's Land Army" 155 

9. War Savings — The Money Behind the Guns 171 

10. Food Production and Conservation 195 

11. The W.A.A.Cs 215 

12. War and Morals 235 

13. What the War Has Done for Women . . . 259 

14. Reconstruction 287 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Few Shells Frontispiece 1 " 

Miss Edith Cavell 22" 

Dr. Elsie Inglis 22 " 

First Ambulance on Duty in the First Zep- 
pelin Raid 56^ 

"Somewhere in France" 64 

Cleaning a Locomotive 94" 

Women as Carriage Cleaners 94" 

Window Cleaners 102 

Steam Roller Driver 102 

Training Women as Aeroplane Builders 112^ 

rrvetting on boilers 116 

Facing Boiler Blue Flanges 116 

Rough Turning Jacket Forging of 6-pounder 

Hotchkiss Gun 124 

How to Dress for Munition Making 136 

Back to the Land 162 

Women Tackle a Strong Man's Problem 162 

Six Reasons Why You Should Buy War Sav- 
ings Certificates 175 

"For Your Children" 184 

Book Marks Issued by the N. W. S. C 192- 

W.A.A.Cs on the March 216 

Women of the Reserve Ambulance 216 

Police Women 246' 



FOREWORD 

U /AUR War Loan from England"— That is 
\^/ the heading under which were grouped 
the nine lectures given by Miss Helen 
Fraser at Vassar College. England has bor- 
rowed a billion or so of dollars from us, but the 
obligation is not all her way. The moral 
strengtli of our cause is immeasurably increased 
by her alliance, and the spectacle of a great 
democracy organizing itself for complete unity 
in a world crisis is worth an incalculable amount 
to us. Such a vision Miss Fraser has brought 
to her wider public among the women of 
America in this notable book. Of her personal 
influence let me quote again from the Vassar 
students' newspaper: 

"Miss Fraser, here's to you! We don't need 
to say that we liked Miss Fraser and everything 
she had to tell us. The way we followed her 
around, and packed every room in which she 
spoke, out to the doors and sometimes up to the 
ceiling, is proof enough of that. And even the 



Foreword 

fact that it was Sunday could not check our out- 
burst of song in the Soap Palace as Miss Fraser 
departed. Her gracious speech of appreciation 
left with us the question not phrased by her 
before, but certainly in the minds of every one 
of us who had been hearing her : 'What are we 
going to do?' " 

An unsolicited testimonial, this, of the most 
genuine kind. The College students of today 
are not easily coaxed into lecture rooms outside 
of their own classes. 

I believe that Miss Fraser's book will be read 
with the same eager attention that followed her 
first speeches in this country as she began her 
work of educating American women to a sense 
of what the mobilization of the entire citizen 
army of a democracy must mean. 

Nor will her influence cease there. Miss 
Fraser's book is a piece of history; and history 
is action. The wonderful work of the women of 
England is already emulated by the splendid 
efforts along many lines of the women in our 
country. The new lessons of co-operation and of 



Foreword 

selfless devotion, learned from this book will, 
I confidently predict, within a few months, be 
translated into action by the Women's War Ser- 
vice Committees in every state of our land. 

And the greatest lesson of all is that women 
and men must work together in this new world. 
I count it an honour — being a man — to be asked 
to introduce Miss Fraser in this way to the 
American public. For my part I would have 
no separate women's division, except such as 
concerns the tasks exclusively for women. I 
would have women side by side with men in 
every division of labour, working out the task 
with equal fidelity, equal authority, and equal 
rewards. One of the results of this amazing age 
is going to be the new comprehension, under- 
standing, and sympathy of the one sex for the 
other. 



H. N. MacCbacken. 



Vassar College, 
Poughkeepsie, New York. 
January 11, 1918. 



THE women of all the allies are one in this 
great struggle. Our hopes and our fears, 
our anxieties and our prayers, our visions 
and our desolations, are the same. 

Our work is the same task of supporting and 
sustaining the energies of our men in arms and 
of our nations at home. All the allied women 
know more of each other than they ever did 
before, and this is all to the good. 

The task of women in this struggle and in the 
reconstruction to come after, are great tasks, and 
the world needs in every country not only the 
wisdom and knowledge of its own women but 
the strength in them that comes from being one 
of a great world-wide group and conscious of the 
unity of all women. 

Anything that can help to that unity and un- 
derstanding seems to me of great value, and this 
record is written for American women in the 
hope it may be of some small service. 

December 25, 1917. H. F. 



THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN 



"I have no fear nor shrinking. I have seen 
death so often that it is not strange or fearful 
to me. ... I thank God for this ten weeks' 
quiet before the end. Life has always been hur- 
ried and full of difficulty. This time of rest has 
been a great mercy. They have all been very 
kind to me here. But this I would say, standing 
as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that 
patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred 
or bitterness towards anyone." 

— Edith Cavell's last message. 



CHAPTER I 

THE SPIRIT OF WOMEN 

TO WOMEN 

Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts 
That have foreknown the utter price, 

Your hearts burn upward like a flame 
Of splendour and of sacrifice. 

For you too, to battle go, 

Not with the marching drums and cheers, 
But in the watch of solitude 

And through the boundless night of fears. 

And not a shot comes blind with death, 
And not a stab of steel is pressed 

Home, but invisibly it tore, 

And entered first a woman's breast. 

From Lawrence Binyon's "For the Fallen." 

THE spirit of women in this greatest of 
world struggles cannot, in its essence, be 
differentiated from the spirit of men. They 
are one. The women of our countries in the 
mass feel about the issues of this struggle just 
as the men do; know, as they do, why we fight, 
and like them, are going on to the end. The 
declarations of our Government as to conditions 
for peace are ours, too, and when we vote, we 
shall show the spirit of women is clearly and 



20 Women and War Work 

definitely on the side of freedom, justice and 
democracy. 

Our actions speak louder than any words can 
ever do, and the record of our women's sacri- 
fices and work stand as great silent witnesses to 
our spirit. There is nothing we have been asked 
to do that we have not done and we have initiated 
great pieces of work ourselves. The hardest time 
was in the beginning when we waited for our 
tasks, feeling as if we beat stone walls, reading 
our casualty lists, receiving our wounded, car- 
ing for the refugees, doing everything we could 
for the sailor and soldier and his dependants, 
helping the women out of work, but feeling there 
was so much more to do behind the men — so very 
much more — for which we had to wait. We did 
all the other things faithfully and, so far as we 
could, prepared ourselves and when the tasks 
came, we volunteered in tens of thousands, every 
kind of woman, young, old, middle-aged, rich and 
poor, trained and untrained, and today we have 
1,250,000 women in industry directly replacing 
men, 1,000,000 in munitions, 83,000 additional 



The Spirit of Women 21 

women in Government Departments, 258,300 
whole and part-time women workers on the land. 
We are recruiting women for the Women's Army 
Auxiliary Corps at the rate of 10,000 a month 
and we have initiated a Women's Koyal Naval 
Service. We have had the help of about 60,000 
V. A. D.'s (Voluntary Aid Detachment of Red 
Cross) in Hospitals in England and France, and 
on our other fronts, in addition to our thousands 
of trained nurses. 

The women in our homes carry on — no easy 
task in these days of shortages in food and coal 
and all the other difficulties, saving, conserving, 
working, caring for the children, with so many 
babies whose fathers have never seen them, 
though they are one to two years old, and so 
many babies who will never see their fathers. 

Some of our women have died on active ser- 
vice, doctors, nurses and orderlies. Our most 
recent and greatest loss is in the death of Dr. 
Elsie Inglis, the initiator of the Scottish Women's 
Hospitals, w r ho died on November 26th, three 
days after she had safely brought back her Unit 



22 Women and War Work 

from South Russia, which had been nursing the 
Serbians attached to the Russian army. 

One who was with her at the end writes, "It 
was a great triumphant going forth." There was 
no hesitation, no fear. As soon as she knew she 
was going, that the call had come, with her 
wonted decision of character, she just readjusted 
her whole outlook. "For a long time I meant to 
live," she said, "but now I know I am going. It 
is so nice to think of beginning a new job over 
there ! But I would have liked to have finished 
one or two jobs here first !" 

She told us the story of the breaking of their 
moorings as they lay in the river in a great storm 
of wind and of how that breaking had saved them 
from colliding with another ship. "I asked," she 
said, "what had happened." Someone said "Our 
moorings broke." I said, "No, a hand cut them !" 
Then, after a moment's silence, with an expres- 
sion in face and voice which it is utterly impos- 
sible to convey, she added, "That same Hand is 
cutting my moorings now, and I am going forth !" 
The picture rose before you of an unfettered ship 




Miss Edith Cavell 




Dr. Elsie Inglis 



The Spirit of Women 23 

going out to the wide sea and of the great un- 
trammelled, unhindered soul moving majestically 
onwards. 

There was no fear, no death! How could 
there be. She never thought of her own work- 
she knew unity. "You did magnificently," was 
said to her within an hour of her going. With 
all her wonted assurance aud with a touch of 
pride she answered, "My Unit did magnifi- 
cently." 

Her loss is irreparable to us, but there is no 
room for sorrow. She leaves us triumph, victory, 
and peace. 

Edith CavelPs name is another that shines 
upon our roll of honour — the same serene great 
spirit — no thought of self, but only a great love 
and desire to serve — and a great fearlessness. 
Her message, before she went out alone at dawn 
to her death, which added another stain to the 
enemy's pages dark with blood, was the message 
of one who saw the eternal verities, the things 
worth living and dying for. 



24 Women and War Work 

Our men's Roll of Honor is a heavy Roll. We 
have lost in killed and permanently out of the 
army, a million men and over 75 per cent of our 
casualties are our own Island losses. Our women 
in every village and in every city street have lost 
husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers and friends. 
From every rank of life our men have died, the 
agricultural labourer, the city clerk, the railway 
man, the miner, the engineer, the business man, 
the poet, the journalist, the author, the artist, the 
scientist, the heirs of great names, many of the 
most brilliant of our young men. We comb out 
our mines and shipyards, and factories, cease- 
lessly for more men. Our boys at eighteen go 
into the army. From eighteen to forty-one every 
man is liable for service. Our Universities have 
only a handful of men in them and these are the 
disabled, the unfit, and men from other countries. 
Oxford and Cambridge Colleges are full of 
Officers' Training Corps men. The Examina- 
tion Schools and the Town Hall at Oxford are 
Hospitals, and Oxford and Cambridge streets 
are full of the blue-clad wounded, as are so many 



The Spirit of Women 25 

of our cities. We are a nation at war, and at 
war for over three years and everywhere and in 
everything we are changed. 

In these years we women have lived always 
with the shadow of the war over us— it never 
leaves us, night or day. We do not live com- 
pletely where we are in these days. A bit of us 
is always with our men on our many fields of 
war. We live partly in France and Flanders, in 
Italy, in the Balkans, in Egypt and Palestine and 
Mesopotamia, in Africa, with the lonely white 
crosses in Gallipoli, with our men who guard us 
sleeping and waking, going down to the sea in 
ships and under the sea, fighting death in sub- 
marines and mines, and with those who in the 
air are the eyes and the winged cavalry of our 
forces. 

We mourn our dead, not sadly and hopelessly, 
though life for many of us is emptier forever, 
and for many so much harder, and we wear very 
little mourning. We mourn silently, and with a 
sure faith that our men's supreme sacrifice is not 
in vain. "Greater love hath no man than this, 



26 Women and War Work 

that he lay down his life for his friend." The 
little white crosses of our graves symbolize the 
faith for which they die. 

The message of our soldier poets who have been 
created by this war and have written immortal 
verse, and many of whom have died, is the mes- 
sage of men who have seen through the veils of 
time into eternity, who are free of life and death, 
whom nothing can hurt, "if it be not the Destined 
Will." 

The veils of time grow thin in these days to 
those of us who take Death into our reckoning 
all the time. We think of our men gone on ahead 
as eternally young. 

"Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. 

There is music in the midst of desolation 

And a glory that shines before our tears. 
***** 

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old 
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the Sun and in the morning 
We will remember them." 

We know, too, though we do not often define it, 
that the forces we women fight in the enemy are 



The Spirit of Women 27 

the forces that have left women out in world 
affairs. 

Germany is the Fatherland, never, it is sig- 
nificant, the Motherland as our little Islands 
are, and its mad dream of militarism and Welt- 
macht is the dream of men who deny any con- 
structive part to women in the great affairs of 
life. The hopes of all the democracies are bound 
up in this struggle and its issue, and there is no 
real place in the world for the true service and 
genius and work of women, any more than for 
that of the mass of men, save in democracy. 
We mean so much in these days by democracy. 
It seems to be indefinable in its larger meanings. 
It is not a system of government, but, on the 
other hand, no country can be called democratic 
that has not established political freedom, and 
no country is truly democratic in which such 
freedom is only in name, and its women are not 
included or a group rule or the demagogue and 
the worst kind of politician hold sway. 

Democracy is not here till all serve and all are 
given opportunities so that they have something 



28 Women and War Work 

of value to give to their country and to the world. 
Democracy is the ever changing, ever developing, 
ever creative spirit of man expressing itself in 
his institutions and systems of government and 
relationships. 

Its quarrel with our enemies, who would im- 
pose on the mass of men cast-iron systems, and 
would set up state idols to be worshipped as 
higher than the Conscience and spirit of man, is 
so profound and goes so deeply into knowledge 
and feelings that are too big for words, that the 
soldier who never tries to express it but goes out 
and drills and works and disciplines himself 
that he may present his body as a living shield 
for the faith that is within him, and the woman 
who works with him and behind him, healing 
and giving, silently, are perhaps wisest of all. 

It is no time for words only, though right 
words are mighty powers, but for living faith in 
deeds and the spirit of the women of all our al- 
lied countries is swift to answer the challenge — 
by their works shall ye know them. 



The Spirit of Women 29 

The spirit of our women shows, like that of the 
French women who tend their farms, keep their 
shops, work ceaselessly everywhere, most clearly 
and wonderfully in their work. In our hundreds 
of hospitals night and day, they care for the 
wounded and the sick and the dying, bringing 
consolation, love, skill, heroism, patience and all 
fine things as their gift. From myriads of homes 
they pour forth to their daily toil, carrying on 
the work of the country, educating the children, 
taking the place of their men on the railways, the 
factory, the workshop, the banks and offices. In 
the munition works, in the shipyards, in the 
engineering shops, in the aeroplane sheds, they 
work in tens of thousands — risking life and 
health in some cases, but thinking little of it, 
compared with what their men are doing, knee- 
deep in snow and mud and water in the trenches. 
"Is the work heavy?" you ask. "Not so heavy as 
the soldiers'." "Are the hours long?" "Six days 
and nights in the trenches are longer." "We are 
going to win and you are going to help us" — 
and the munition girl and the land girl and the 



30 Women and War Work 

workers answer not only with cheers and words 
but answer with shells and ships and aeroplanes 
and submarines and food produced and con- 
served, and in industrial tasks done by men and 
women together. 

The enemy airships and aeroplanes bomb our 
cities but our girls "carry on" — no telephone girl 
has left her post — there have been no panics in 
our workshops. 

And the spirit of the Waac — the khaki girl — 
is the spirit of her brother. 

On one occasion in France in an air raid, 
enemy bombs came very near some girl signallers. 
They behaved splendidly and someone suggested 
it should be mentioned in the Orders of the Day. 
"No," said the Commanding Officer, "we don't 
mention soldiers in orders for doing their duty," 
— and that tribute to their attitude is deserved 
and the right one. 

And, like our men, we carry on cheerfully, 
knowing there is only one possible end, victory. 
We fight for the sanctity of the given word, for 



The Spirit of Women 31 

honour, for the rights of individuals and nations, 
for the ideals that have preserved humanity from 
barbarism, for the right of service, for the salva- 
tion of common humanity. 

More, we women work with a feeling in our 
hearts that we, who bear and cherish life, and to 
whom its destruction is most terrible, have a 
great work to do and a great part to play in the 
settlement of the problem of war in the future. 

The transmutation of the struggles of man- 
kind from the physical to the spiritual, the solu- 
tion of national and international problems, the 
solution of all the riddles of life that demand an 
answer or man's conquest, cannot be done by 
man alone. It is our task also and to the great 
work of building up a new world after we 
emerge from this crucible of fire in which the 
souls of the nations are being tested, the spirit 
of women has much to bring. 



ORGANIZATION AND ITS 
PITFALLS 



"The more they gazed, the more their wonder 

grew 
That one small head could carry all she knew." 



CHAPTER II 

ORGANIZATION AND ITS PITFALLS 

THERE are people who declare that the 
winning of this war depends on organiza- 
tion alone. That is palpably untrue. Good 
organization can do much. The greatest thing in 
all organizations is the living flame that makes 
grouping real — the selfless spirit of service that 
the fighting man possesses and that is beyond all 
words of praise. "" 

Talk to a soldier or a sailor, realize how he 
thinks and feels about his ship, his battalion, his 
aircorps. He is subordinated — selfless — disci- 
plined. The secret of the good soldiers' achieve- 
ments and his greatness is selfless service and in 
our national organizations behind him that same 
spirit is the one great thing that counts. 

If you have that as a foundation among your 
workers, organization is easy. 

We found, at the beginning of the war, a great 
tendency among women to rush into direct war 



36 Women and War Work 

work. Masses of women wanted to leave work 
they knew everything about to go and do work 
they knew nothing about. One thing we have 
realized, that the trained and educated woman 
is invaluable, that the best service you can render 
your country is to do the work you know best 
and are trained for, if it is, as it frequently is, 
important civic work. Another point, no 
younger woman should stop her education or 
training — it is the greatest mistake possible. 
The war is not over and even when it is, the great 
task of reconstruction lies ahead and we want 
every trained woman we can get for that. Our 
women are in Universities and Colleges in 
greater numbers than ever, and more opportu- 
nities for education, in Medicine in particular 
have been opened to them. 

The trained woman makes the best worker in 
practically every department and is particularly 
useful in organizing. A scheme that is only in- 
differently good but, so far as it goes, is on right 
lines, well organized and directed, will be more 
valuable and get far better results than a perfect 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 37 

scheme badly organized and run. An organiza- 
tion or a committee that has a woman as Chair- 
man, President or Secretary, who insists on run- 
ning everything and deciding everything for 
herself, is bound for disaster. 

I should certainly place the will and ability 
to delegate authority high up in the qualifications 
a good organizer must possess. 

We cannot afford to have little petty jeal- 
ousies, social, local, and individual, on war com- 
mittees or any other for that matter, but in this 
big struggle, they are particularly petty and 
unworthy. 

We have all met frequently the kind of person 
who tells you, "This village will never work with 
that village," or "Mrs. This will never work with 
Mrs. That. They never do"; and I always an- 
swer, "Isn't it time they learned to, when their 
boys die in the trenches together, why shouldn't 
they work together," and they always do when 
it is put to them. 

There is no difficulty in getting women to work 
together in our country. We have a link in our 



/ 



38 Women and War Work 

Koll of Honor that is more unifying than any 
words or arguments or appeals can be. Our 
women of every rank of life are closely drawn 
together. 

The appeal to women is to organize for 
National Service and to realize that w r ork of 
national importance is likely not to be at all 
important work. 

The women in important places in all our 
countries will be few in proportion, but the 
struggle will be won in the Nation, as in the 
Army, by the army of the myriads of faithful 
workers faithfully performing tasks of drudgery 
and quiet service — and a realization of this is 
the greatest need. 

Sticking to the work is of supreme importance. 
We do not want people who take up something 
with great enthusiasm and drop it in a few 
months. Nothing is achieved by that. 

The good organizer sees her workers do not 
"grow weary in well doing." 

Another important w r ork in organization is to 
prevent waste of material, effort and money, by 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 39 

co-ordination whenever possible, though I should 
say, as a broad principle, co-ordination should 
not be carried to the point of merging together 
kinds of work that make a different appeal for 
work and money and require different treatment 
and knowledge and powers. The best results are 
reached by securing concentration of appeal and 
organization on one big issue and getting the 
work done by a group directly and keenly inter- 
ested in the one big thing and with enthusiasm 
for it and knowledge of it. 

In the personnel of committees and their com- 
position our women have made it a definite policy 
to secure the appointment of women to all Gov- 
ernment and National Committees on which our 
presence would be useful and on which we ought 
to be represented and we always prefer commit- 
tees of men and women together, unless it be for 
anything that is distinctly better served by 
women's committees. 

There is one pitfall in organization into which 
women fall more readily than men in my ex- 
perience. Our instinct as women is to want to 



40 Women and War Work 

make everything perfect. We instinctively run 
to detail and to a desire for absolute accuracy 
and perfection. 

This is invaluable in many ways, but in or- 
ganizing on a big scale may be a serious fault. 
There must, of course, be method, order and ac- 
curacy, but the great essential to secure in big 
things is harmonious working — not to insist on 
a rigid sameness but to allow for widely diverg- 
ent views and attitudes and ways of doing things 
so long as the essential rules are observed. We 
should not insist too much on identity in the way 
of work of different places and districts. In es- 
sentials — unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all 
things, charity — that might well be the wise 
organizer's motto. 

The supplementing of governmental organiza- 
tion by national voluntary organization is a great 
piece of work and in the beginning of the war, 
and still, many of our organizations, voluntary 
or semi-official in character, were of great ser- 
vice. The work of the Soldiers and Sailors Fam- 
ilies' Association is an example. The S. and 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 41 

S. F. A. had been created in the South African 
War and in peace time and war time looked after 
the dependants of the soldier and sailor. Its 
committees were composed of men and women — 
and it administered voluntary funds and later 
grants from the National Relief Fund, raised at 
the outbreak of war. 

When war broke out, all the Reservists were 
called up and our men volunteered in tens of 
thousands. The pay offices of the army, being 
small like everything else in our army, could not 
cope quickly with the numbers of claims for al- 
lowances pouring in, but the S. and S. F. A. 
stepped into the breach and looked after the 
dependants. It secured vast numbers more of 
women in every town and village who visited 
every dependant and looked after them. They 
advanced the allowances which were paid back 
to them later — and this started in the first week 
of the war. They gave additional grants in cer- 
tain hard cases for rent, sickness or in event of 
deaths in family at home. Every home was vis- 
ited and no dependant needed to be in distress 



42 Women and War Work 

or want — S. and S. F. A. offices existed in every 
town and representatives in every village and 
any difficulty or trouble could be brought to 
them. The whole of this work is done volun- 
tarily. In some cases workrooms were started 
from which sewing and knitting for soldiers and 
sailors were given to the dependents and paid for. 
It was not only the money and practical help 
that was of great service — the S. and S. F. A. 
visitor to the soldier's wife and mother brought 
sympathy and help and interest. 

Another movement for soldiers and sailors 
dependents was the founding of clubs for them 
in many towns. One hundred and thirty-five of 
these clubs are linked up now in the United Ser- 
vices Clubs League. They are bright, cheery 
rooms in which the women can find newspapers, 
books, music, amusement, and opportunity to 
sew or knit comforts, can meet their friends 
and talk. 

The Royal Patriotic Fund was another semi- 
official organization which was run voluntarily, 
gave grants at death of soldier or sailor and 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 43 

administered pensions. It is now entirely 
merged in the Naval and Military War Pensions 
Statutory Committee and local committees set 
up in January, 1916, which administer all 
grants, pensions, wound gratuities, etc., and 
looks after dependants. 

Women sit on the Statutory Committee and 
there must be women members on every County, 
Borough and City War Pensions Committee in 
our country. 

The organization of war charities is now in 
England controlled by the War Charities Com- 
mittee appointed by the Government in April, 
1916. The committee controls not only what 
could be strictly termed War Charities, but all 
war agencies of any kind for which appeals for 
funds are made to the public. These organiza- 
tions must be registered and approved by the 
committee, and their accounts must be open to 
inspection and audit. This was a wise and nec- 
essary step, not so much because of actual fraud- 
ulent appeals — there has been practically none 
of that, but there was a certain amount of over- 



44 Women and War Work 

lapping and of waste of money, material and 
energy, and some very few organizations in which 
an undue proportion of funds raised was ab- 
sorbed in expenses. Comforts for soldiers and 
prisoners of war parcels are also now co-ordi- 
nated under two national committees. 

The first work of registering Belgian refugees 
and of providing French and Flemish inter- 
preters was done by a voluntary organization — 
the London Society for Women's Suffrage (a 
branch of N. U. W. S. S. ) , which has always been 
notable for its admirable organization. It pro- 
vided 150 interpreters for this work in a few 
days, and work was carried on at all the London 
Centres from early morning till midnight. When 
the Government took over the charge of Belgian 
refugees, the system of registration used by the 
London Society was adopted without change by 
them and the organizer in charge was taken over 
also and put in a very responsible position at 
the War Refugees Committee's Headquarters. 

The work of our Government Employment 
Exchanges (which were established before the 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 45 

War by the Board of Trade) and are now under 
the Ministry of Labour — has been supplemented 
by various Professional Women's Bureaus, by 
the compiling of a Professional Women's Reg- 
ister, secured through Universities, Colleges, 
Headmistresses' Association, etc., and by the 
setting up of the Women's Service Bureau by the 
London Society for Women Suffrage (N. U. W. 
S. S.). Various women's organizations have es- 
tablished most valuable clearing houses for 
voluntary workers in Scotland and England and 
Wales. The Women's Service Bureau has dealt 
with 40,000 applications for voluntary and paid 
work — mostly paid. Its interviewers take the 
greatest trouble to place these applicants suit- 
ably, and to find out just what they can do or 
would be good at doing. 

Our biggest Government arsenal secured their 
first munition supervisors through it — and the 
Government Departments, big firms, factories, 
organizations, banks, workshops, institutions of 
any kind, send to it for workers. 

It not only finds these posts without charge — 



46 Women and War Work 

it is supported entirely by voluntary contribu- 
tion — but it has a loan and grant fund to enable 
women and girls without money to pay for 
training and maintenance. 

Its records and the letters in its files provide 
reading that is as absorbing as any novel, and it 
was one of the wise agencies that realized the 
older woman had a place and could help as well 
as the younger ones. 

To find the person and the post and to put 
them together is its fascinating and admirably 
done task. 

The organization done by women in Britain 
has been notable and admirable. 

I can only touch on some of it and must leave 
out much, but it is worth while noting that there 
has been very little overlapping in the work. 
The total percentage of overlapping was esti- 
mated by the War Charities Committee on their 
investigation at 10 per cent and of that only a 
very small amount was due to women. 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 47 

Women Have Served or Are Serving on the 
Following Government Committees. 



Belgian Kefugees' Committee. 1914. 
Clerical and Commercial Occupation Committee, 
do (Scotland.) 1915. 

Disabled Officers and Men. 

Education After the War. April, 1916. 

Educational Eeform. (August, 1916.) 

Food, Committee of Inquiry Into High Cost of — 

June, 1916. 
Advisory Committee on Women in Industry. 

March, 1916. 

Labor Commission to Deal with Industrial Un- 
rest. (Ministry of Labor.) June, 1917. 

Munitions Central Labor Supply Committee. 

Munitions, Arbitration Tribunals. 

Munitions, Committee on the Supply and Or- 
ganization of Women's Service in Canteens, 
Hostels, Clubs, etc. December, 1916. 

Naval and Military War Pensions Statutory 
Committee. January, 1916. 

Nurses, Supply of — October, 1916. 



48 Women and War Work 

Polish Victims' Belief Fund. 

Prevention and Relief of Distress. 1914. 

Professional Classes Sub-Committee. 

Prisoners of War Help Committee. 

Reconstruction Committee. ( To advise the Gov- 
ernment on the many national problems 
which will arise at the end of the war.) 
1916. 

Shops: Committee of Inquiry, to Consider Con- 
ditions of Retail Trade to Secure the Enlist- 
ment of Men. (November, 1915.) 

Teachers' Salaries. Departmental Committee of 
Enquiry. June, 1917. 

War Charities. April, 1916. 

National War Savings Committee. April, 1916. 



Organization and Its Pitfalls 49 



Committees Exclusively Composed of Women. 



Committee, Report on Joint Standing Industrial 

Councils. 1917. 
Women's Wages Committee. 1917. 
Central Committee on Women's Employment. 

1914. 
Drinking Among Women, Committee of Enquiry. 

November, 1915. 
There are also two women on the — 
Executive Committee of National Relief Fund. 
Ministry of Food has two Avoinen Co-Directors — 

Mrs. C. S. Peel 

Mrs. Pember Reeves 



HOSPITALS— RED CROSS— V.A.D. 

"Come, ye blessed of my Father ; 
I was sick and ye visited me." 

— Matt., Chap. 25. 

"A lady with a lamp shall stand 
In the great history of the land, 
A noble type of good 
Heroic womanhood." 

— H. W. Longfellow, 
"To Florence Nightingale." 



CHAPTER III 

HOSPITALS— RED CROSS— V. A. D. 

WHEN war broke out on August 4, 1914, 
probably the only women in our country 
who knew exactly how they could help, 
and would be used in the war, were our nurses 
in the Navy and Army nursing services. 

In the Army, Queen Alexandra's Imperial 
Military Nursing Service had in it at that time 
about 280 members, matrons, sisters and staff 
nurses, Miss Becher, R.R.C., being Matron-in- 
Chief for Military Hospitals. The Q. A. I. M. 
N. S. had a large Reserve which was also imme- 
diately called out and these nurses were used at 
once, six parties being sent to France and 
Belgium by August 20th. 

The Second Branch was the Territorial Force 
Nursing Service, which was in 1914 eight years 
old. It was initiated by Miss Haldane and a 
draft scheme of an establishment of nurses will- 
ing to serve in general hospitals in the event of 



54 Women and War Work 

the Territorial Forces being mobilized, was sub- 
mitted at a meeting held in Miss Haldane's 
house, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director Gen- 
eral, being present. This scheme was approved 
and an Advisory Council appointed at the War 
Office. 

The Matrons of the largest and most important 
nurse-training centres in the Kingdom were 
appointed as principal matrons (unpaid) and 
to them the success of this Force is largely due. 
They received the applications of matrons, sisters 
and nurses willing to join, looked after their ref- 
erences and submitted them, after approval by 
the Local Committee, to the Advisory Council. 
To their splendid work was due the ease of the 
vast mobilization of nurses when war broke out. 
There were then 3,000 nurses on their rolls. On 
August 5th they were called out and in ten days 
23 Territorial General Hospitals in England, 
Wales and Scotland were ready to receive the 
wounded and the nurses were also ready. 

Each hospital had 520 beds, but this accommo- 
dation was quite inadequate after a few months 



Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D. 55 

of war, and the accommodation of practically 
every hospital was increased to 1,000 to 
3,000 beds and many Auxiliary Hospitals had 
to be organized. By June, 1915, the Territorial 
Nursing Staff was 4,000 in number and in Hos- 
pitals in France and in Belgium and in clearing 
stations, there were over 400 Territorial Nurses 
as well as Imperial Nurses. 

The Naval Nurses were about 70 in number 
with a Reserve, and their Reserve was called up 
at once also, and they went to their various Hos- 
pitals. The other two great organizations, the 
British Red Cross and the order of St. John of 
Jerusalem, now working together through the 
joint committee set up to administer the Times 
Fund for the Red Cross, which has reached over 
$30,000,000, had their schemes also. In time of 
war they are controlled by the War Office and 
Admiralty. The Red Cross had, since 1909, or- 
ganized Voluntary Aid Detachments to give vol- 
untary aid to the sick and wounded in the event 
of war in home territory. There were 60,000 men 
and women trained in transport work, cooking, 



56 Women and War Work 

laundry, first aid and home nursing. St. John's 
ambulance had the same system of ambulance 
workers and V. A. D.'s to call on. 

As the war proceeded it was quite clear that 
the nursing staffs, though we had secured 3,000 
more trained nurses through the Red Cross in 
the first few weeks of the war, would be quite 
inadequate, and it was found necessary to use 
V. A. D.'s and to open V. A. D. Hospitals, most 
of them being established in large private houses 
lent for the purpose. Within nine months there 
were 800 of these at work in every part of Eng- 
land, Scotland and Wales. The V. A. D.'s suf- 
fered a little at first from confusion with the 
ladies who insisted on rushing off to France after 
taking a ten day's course in first aid. We had 
suffered a great deal from that kind of thing in 
the South African War and were determined to 
have no repetition of it, so they were firmly and 
decisively removed from France without delay. 

To get more trained nurses, rules were relaxed 
and the age limit raised. Many nurses, retired 
and married, returned to work, but very quickly 



Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D. 57 

it was perfectly clear our trained nurses were 
inadequate in number for the great work before 
us, and in less than a year in most hospitals 
every ward had one V. A. D. worker assisting 
who had been nominated by her Commandant 
and County Director, and in March, 1915, the 
Hospitals were asked by the Director General 
of the Army Medical Service to train V. A. D.'s 
in large numbers as probationers, for three or 
six months, to fit them for work under trained 
nurses. Every possible woman, trained or par- 
tially trained, was mobilized and thousands have 
been trained during the three years of war, and 
V. A. D. members have been drafted to military 
and Red Cross Hospitals, abroad and at home, 
in addition to doing the work of the V. A. D. 
Hospitals. A V. A. D. Hospital with a hundred 
beds will have two trained nurses, and all 
the other work is done by V. A. D.'s. The Com- 
mandant-in-Chief now is Lady Ampthill. Dame 
Katharine Furse was Commandant-in-Chief until 
quite recently, but is now head of the new 
Women's Royal Navy Service. 



58 Women and War Work 

Many have gone to France and done distin- 
guished work and there is no body of women in 
our country who have done more faithful and 
useful work than our V. A. D.'s, who nurse, cook 
and wash dishes, serve meals, scrub the floors, 
look after the linen and do everything for the 
comfort and welfare of our men, with a capacity, 
zeal and endurance beyond praise. About 60,000 
women have helped in this way. Our nurses and 
V. A. D.'s have distinguished themselves at home 
and abroad. They have been in casualty lists 
on all our fronts. They have been decorated for 
bravery and for heroic work. The full value of 
all they have done cannot yet be appraised. They 
have spent themselves unceasingly in caring for 
our men. They have nursed them with shells 
falling around. Hospitals have frequently been 
shelled and in one case two nurses worked in a 
theatre, wearing steel helmets during the bom- 
bardment, with patients who were under anaes- 
thetics and could not be moved. They have 
waited out beside men who could not be got in 
from under shell fire of the enemy until darkness 



Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D. 59 

fell. Two V. A. D. nurses in another raid saw 
to the removal of all their patients to cellars and, 
while they themselves were entering the cellars 
after everyone was safe, bombs fell upon the 
building they had just left and completely de- 
molished it. Some of our nurses have died of 
typhus. They have been wounded in Hospitals 
and on Hospital Trains, and they have done all 
their work as cheerfully and with the same high 
courage as our men have. We have had helping 
us in our nursing numbers of Canadian nurses, 
not only for the beautiful Canadian Hospital at 
Beechborough Park, but for many other Hos- 
pitals in England and France, and nurses from 
Australia and New Zealand. 

We have had American nurses, also, but these 
will now be absorbed, as needed, by the American 
Army in France. 

The records of our Medical women in the war 
are among the very best. The belief that nursing 
was woman's work but that medicine and sur- 
gery were not, was dying before the war, but it 
existed, and it was the war that gave it the final 



60 Women and War Work 

death blow. Immediately war broke out Dr. 
Louisa Garrett Anderson, a daughter of our 
pioneer woman doctor, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett 
Anderson, and Dr. Flora Murray formed the 
Women's Hospital Corps, a complete small unit 
and offered it to the British Government. It 
was refused but accepted by the French Govern- 
ment, and was established by them at Claridge's 
Hotel in Paris, where it did admirable work. Its 
work aroused the interest and admiration of the 
British Royal Army Medical Corps, and they 
were asked to form a Hospital at Wimereux, 
which afterwards amalgamated with the R. A. 
M. C. Later Sir Alfred Keogh established them 
in Endell Street, London, where they have a 
Hospital of over 700 beds. The women surgeons 
and doctors and staff are graded for purposes 
of pay in the same way as men members of 
R. A. M. C. 

In July, 1916, the War Office asked for the 
services of 80 medical women for work at home 
and abroad, and later for 50 more. 

The Women's Service League sent a unit to 



Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D. 61 

Antwerp which did some excellent work, though 
it was there only a very short time. The mem- 
bers of the unit were among the last to leave 
the city, escaping in the last car to cross the 
bridge before it was blown up. 

The work of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, 
organized by the Scottish Federation of the Na- 
tion Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and 
initiated by Dr. Elsie Inglis, of Edinburgh, 
would require a volume to themselves, and Amer- 
ican women, who have given so generously and so 
freely to them, know a great deal about their 
work. The first unit went to Royaumont in 
France, and established itself at the old Abbaye 
there. It stood from the beginning in the very 
first rank for efficiency. A leading French ex- 
pert, Chief of the Pasteur Laboratory in Paris, 
speaking of this Hospital, said he had inspected 
hundreds of military Hospitals, but not one 
which commanded his admiration so completely 
as this. Another unit was sent to Troyes and 
was maintained by the students of Newnham and 
Girton Colleges. Dr. Elsie Inglis's greatest work. 



62 Women and War Work 

began in April, 1915, when her third unit went 
to Serbia, where she may be truly said to have 
saved the Serbian nation from despair. The 
typhus epidemic had at the time of her arrival 
carried off one-third of the Serbian Army Med- 
ical Corps, and the epidemic threatened the very 
existence of the Serbian Army. She organized 
four great Hospital Units, initiated every kind 
of needful sanitary precaution, looked into every 
detail, regardless of her own safety and comfort, 
hesitating at no task, however loathsome and 
terrible. Her constant message to the Serbian 
Medical Headquarters Staff was "Tell me where 
your need is greatest without respect to diffi- 
culties, and we will do our best to help Serbia 
and her brave soldiers." 

Two nurses and one of the doctors died of 
typhus. Miss Margaret Neil Fraser, the famous 
golfer, was one of those who died there, and 
many beds were endowed in the Second Unit in 
her memory. 

The Third Serbian Unit when on its way out 
was commandeered by Lord Methuen at Malta 



Hospitals— Red Cross — V. A. D. 63 

for service among our own wounded troops, a 
service they were glad to render. Later when 
the Germans and Austrians overran Serbia, one 
of the Units retreated with the Serbian Army, 
but the one in which Dr. Inglis was, remained 
at Kralijevo where she refused to leave her 
Serbian wounded, knowing they would die with- 
out her care. She was captured with her staff 
and, after difficulties and indignities and discom- 
forts, were released by the Austrians and re- 
turned through Switzerland to England. On 
her return she urged the War Office to send her, 
and her Unit, to Mesopotamia. Rumors had 
already reached England of the terrible state of 
things there from the medical point of view, 
which was fully revealed later by the Mesopo- 
tamian Commission. She was refused permis- 
sion to go, though it is perfectly clear their 
assistance would have been invaluable and ought 
to have been used. Once more she returned to 
help the Serbians and established Units in the 
Balkans and South Russia. The Serbian people 
have shown every token of gratitude and of honor 



64 Women and War Work 

which it was in their power to bestow upon her. 
The people in 1916 put up a fountain in her 
honor at Mladenovatz, and the Serbian Crown 
Prince conferred on her the highest honor Serbia 
has to give, the First Order of the White Eagle. 
Dr. Inglis died, on November 26th, three days 
after bringing her Unit safely home from South 
Russia. Memorial services were held in her 
honor at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and in St. 
Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh. Those who were 
there speak of it not as a funeral but as a 
triumph. The streets were thronged; all Edin- 
burgh turned out to do her homage as she went 
to her last resting place. The Scottish Command 
was represented and lent the gun-carriage on 
which the coffin was borne and the Union Jack 
which covered it. 

In the Cathedral the Rev. Dr. Wallace Wil- 
liamson, Dean of the Order of The Thistle, said : 
"We are assembled this day with sad but proud 
and grateful hearts to remember before God a 
very dear and noble lady, our beloved sister, 
Elsie Inglis, who has been called to her rest. 



Hospitals— Red Cross — V. A. D. 65 

We mourn only for ourselves, not for her. She 
has died as she lived, in the clear light of faith 
and self-forgetfulness, and now her name is 
linked forever with the great souls who have led 
the van of womanly service for God and man. 
A wondrous union of strength and tenderness, 
of courage and sweetness, she remains for us a 
bright and noble memory of high devotion and 
stainless honor. . . . Especially today, in the 
presence of representatives of the land for which 
she died, we think of her as an immortal link 
between Serbia and Scotland, and as a symbol of 
that high courage which will sustain us, please 
God, till that stricken land is once again re- 
stored, and till the tragedy of war is eradicated 
and crowned with God's great gifts of peace and 
of righteousness." 

The National Union of Women's Suffrage So- 
cities also sent the Millicent Fawcett Unit, 
mimed after its honoured President, to Russia in 
1916 to work among the Polish refugees, es- 
pecially to do maternity nursing, and work 
among the children. 



66 Women and War Work 

In February a Maternity Unit started work in 
Petrograd. With an excellent staff of women 
doctors, nurses and orderlies, the little hospital 
proved a veritable haven of helpfulness to the 
distressed refugee mothers. It soon established 
so good a reputation for its thorough and disin- 
terested work that the help of the workers was 
asked for by the Moscow Union of Zemstovos 
(Town and Rural Councils) for Middle Russia 
and Galicia. 

In May the Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units 
were sent out and at Kazan on the Volga a badly 
needed Children's Hospital for infectious dis- 
eases was opened. The only other hospital in the 
place was so full that it had two patients in each 
bed. They had a fierce fight against diphtheria 
and scarlet fever, which in many cases was very 
bad, and they succeeded in saving most of the 
children, who would certainly have died in their 
miserable homes. 

In the summer, the Units took over a small 
hospital at Stara Chilnoe, a district without a 
doctor, and they treated not only refugees, but 



Hospitals— Red Cross — V. A. D. 67 

the peasants who came in daily in crowds from 
the surrounding districts. Other Units of the 
same kind were started in remote districts and 
in summer a Holiday Home at Suida was run 
to which the women and children could come 
from the Petrograd Maternity Hospital for a 
rest. They also took charge of two hospitals, 
temporarily without any medical staff, in a re- 
mote part of the Kazan district, where they were 
objects of the most intense curiosity. 

The interpreters were kept busy answering 
questions about the ages, salaries and husbands 
of the staff, and the nurses' wrist watches roused 
great excitement. 

That their gratitude and kindness was very 
real, though their notions of suitability of place 
and time were primitive, was shown by the gift 
of three live hens being dumped, at 4 a. m., on 
the bed of a sister sound asleep. 

The final piece of work was the establishing 
of an infectious Hospital for peasants and sol- 
diers in Volhynia, sixty miles behind the firing 



68 Women and War Work 

line in Galicia. This was done at the urgent 
request of the Zemstovos Union. 

There they had to deal with a great deal of 
smallpox and in another case with scabies which 
they stamped out in one small village. These 
Units left Russia before the recent changes, but 
their work was valuable and appreciated, and 
again American women helped us in raising the 
necessary funds, having subscribed $7,500 
towards the Units. 

One of the workers, Ruth Holden, of Radcliffe 
College, Boston, died in one of the epidemics. 
We have had American women, as we have had 
men, helping us from the beginning of the war. 
The American Women's War Relief Fund most 
generously offered to fully equip and maintain 
a surgical hospital of 250 beds at Oldway House, 
Paignton, South Devon, at the beginning of the 
war, and this offer was gratefully accepted by 
the War Office through the Red Cross Society. 

They also gifted six motor ambulances for 
use at the front — and these and the hospital have 



Hospitals — Red Cross — V. A. D. 69 

been of the very greatest service to our wounded 
men. 

Others of our medical women are with mixed 
Units, such as The Wounded Allies' Relief Com- 
mittee. Dr. Dickinson Berry went out with 
others in a Unit from the Royal Free Hospital 
to help the Serbian Government, and Dr. Alice 
Clark is in the Friends' Unit. 

Our medical women have won rich laurels and 
have established themselves in their own pro- 
fession permanently and thoroughly. Behind 
the Hospitals, we have the thousands of women 
who every day are working at the Hospital 
Supply Depots of our country. These are every- 
where and nothing is more wonderful than the 
way in which our voluntary workers have gone 
on faithfully working, conforming to discipline 
and hours and steady service as conscientiously 
as any paid worker. 

The organizing ability displayed by our 
women in this amounts to genius. The buying 
of material, cutting and making up, parcelling, 
storing, and packing of gigantic supplies, all the 



70 Women and War Work 

secretarial and clerical work involved lias been 
the work of women and mostly of women of the 
leisured classes, many of them without any pre- 
vious training. From the organization of the 
big schemes of supply down to such work as the 
collecting of sphagnum moss, everything that 
was needed has been done, and done well. 



"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO 
THE SOLDIER" 

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary, 
But my heart's right there." 

"Cheero." 



CHAPTER IV 

"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO 
THE SOLDIER" 

BLIGHTY" is Home, the British soldiers 
in India's corruption of the Hindustanee, 
and Blighty is a word we all know 
well now. 

The full records of this are not easy to give — so 
much has been done. Perhaps the simplest way is 
to begin with the soldier at the training camp 
and follow him through his soldier's existence. 
The first work lies in giving him comforts, and 
the women of our country still knit a good deal 
and in the early days knitted, as you do now to 
get your supplies, in trains and tubes and 
theatres and concerts, and public meetings. This 
was happening while many of our working 
women were without work and it was felt that 
this was likely to compete very seriously with 
the work of these women. The Queen realized 
there was likely to be hardships through this 



74 Women and War Work 

and also that there would probably be a great 
waste of material if voluntary effort was not 
wisely guided. So she called at Buckingham 
Palace a committee of women to consider the 
position and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild 
was the outcome of it. The following official 
statement, issued on August 21, 1914, intimated 
the Queen's wishes and policy. 

Queen Mary's Needlework Guild has received repre- 
sentations to the effect that the provision of garments 
by voluntary labor may have the consequence of de- 
priving of their employment workpeople who would 
have been engaged for wages in the making of the same 
garments for contractors to the Government. A very 
large part of the garments collected by the Guild con- 
sists, however, of articles which would not in the ordi- 
nary course have been purchased by the Government. 
They include additional comforts for the soldiers and 
sailors actually serving, and for the sick and wounded 
in hospital, clothing for members of their families who 
may fall into distress, and clothing to be distributed by 
the local committees for the prevention and relieving of 
distress among families who may be suffering from un- 
employment owing to the war. If these garments were 
not made by the voluntary labor of women who are 
willing to do their share of work for the country in the 
best way open to them, they would not, in the majority 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 75 

of cases, be made at all. The result would be that 
families in distress would receive in the winter no help 
in the form of clothing, and the soldiers and the sailors 
and the men in hospitals would not enjoy the additional 
comforts that would be provided. The Guild is in- 
formed that flannel shirts, socks, and cardigan jackets 
are a Government issue for soldiers; flannel vest, socks, 
and jerseys for sailors; pa jama suits, serge gowns for 
military hospitals; underclothing, flannel gowns and 
flannel waistcoats for naval hospitals. Her Majesty the 
Queen is most anxious that work done for the Needle- 
work Guild should not have a harmful effect on the 
employment of men, women, and girls in the trades 
concerned, and therefore desires that the workers of 
the Guild should devote themselves to the making of 
garments other than those which would, in the ordinary 
course, be bought by the War Office and Admiralty. All 
kinds of garments will be needed for distribution in the 
winter if there is exceptional distress. 

The Queen would remind those that are assisting the 
Guild that garments which are bought from the shops 
and are sent to the Guild are equally acceptable, and 
their purchases would have the additional advantage of 
helping to secure the continuance of employment of 
women engaged in their manufacture. It is, however, 
not desirable that any appeal for funds should be made 
for this purpose which would conflict with the collection 
of the Prince of Wales's Fund. 

Branches of Queen Mary's Needlework Guild 



76 Women and War Work 

were started everywhere and the Mayoresses of 
practically every town in the Kingdom organized 
their own towns. Gifts came from all over the 
world and a book kept at Friary Court, St. 
James', records the gifts received from Greater 
Britain and the neutral countries. 

The demand for comforts was very great and 
in ten months the gross number of articles re- 
ceived was 1,101,105, but this did not represent 
anything like all. It was the Queen's wish that 
the branches of her Guild should be free to do 
as they wished in distribution, send to local 
regiments, or regiments quartered in the neigh- 
borhood, or use them for local distress. Great 
care was taken to see there was no overlapping, 
and this is secured fully by Sir Edward Ward's 
Committee. 

Our men have been well looked after in the 
way of comforts, socks and mitts and gloves and 
jerseys, and mufflers and gloves for minesweep- 
ers and helmets, everything they needed, and the 
Regimental Comforts Funds and work still 
exists as well, all co-ordinated now. 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 77 

The Fleet has also had fresh vegetables sup- 
plied to it the whole time by a voluntary agency. 

At the Training Camps, in France, in every 
field of war, we have the Y. M. C. A., and there 
is no soldier in these days and no civilian who 
does not know the Red Triangle. There are over 
1,000 huts in Britain and over 150 in France. 
It is the sign that means something to eat and 
something warm to drink, somewhere cozy and 
warm out of the cold and chill and damp of 
winter camp and trench, somewhere to write a 
letter, somewhere to read and talk, somewhere 
that brings all of "Blighty" that can come to the 
field of war. In our Y. M. C. A. huts, 30,000 
women work. In the camp towns we have also 
the Guest Houses, run by voluntary organiza- 
tions of women. In the Town Halls we have teas 
and music and in our houses we entertain 
overseas troops as our guests. 

Our men move in thousands to and from the 
front, going and on leave, moving from one camp 
to another, and Victoria Station, Charing Cross 
and Waterloo are names written deep in our 



78 Women and War Work 

hearts these days. We have free buffets for our 
fighting men at all of these, and at all our 
London stations and ports, and these are open 
night and day. All the money needed is found 
by voluntary subscriptions. 

Our men come in on the leave train straight 
from the trenches, loaded up with equipment, 
with their rifles canvas-covered to keep them dry 
and clean, with Flanders mud caked upon them 
to the waist, very tired, with that look they all 
bring home from the trenches in their eyes, but 
in Blighty and trying to forget how soon they 
have to go back. The buffets are there for them, 
and those who have no one to meet them in Lon- 
don and who have to travel north or west or east 
to go home, are met by men and women who direct 
them where to go by day and motor them across 
London to their station at night. The leave 
trains that get in on Sunday morning brings Scot- 
tish soldiers that cannot leave till evening, and 
St, Columba's, Church of Scotland, has stepped 
into the breach. The women meet the train, 
carry off the soldier for breakfast in the Hall, 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 79 

which is ready, and they entertain them all day. 
Thousands have been entertained in this way, and 
"It's just home," said one Gordon Highlander. 

The soldier is in France and there he finds we 
have sent him Blighty, too — canteens and Y. M. 
C. A. Huts. Our books and our magazines, 
everything we can think of and send, goes to 
every field of war. 

He is followed where he can be by amusement 
and entertainment. Concert parties are ar- 
ranged by our actors and actresses, and they go 
out and sing and act and amuse our men behind 
the lines. Lena Ashwell has organized Concert 
parties and done a great work in this way. 

Such work as Miss McNaughton's, recorded in 
her "Diary of the War," and for which she was 
decorated before her death, largely caused by 
overwork, as Lady Dorothie Fielding's ambu- 
lance work, for which she also was decorated, 
and the work of the "Women of Pervyse" stand 
out, even among the wonderful things done by 
individual women in this war. 

The "Women of Pervyse," Mrs. Knocker, now 



80 Women and War Work 

the Baronnes de T'Serclas, and Miss Mairi Chis- 
holm, went out with the Field Ambulance Com- 
mittee, and were quartered with others at Ghent 
before and during and after the siege of Ant- 
werp. When the ambulance trains started to 
come in from Antwerp they worked day and 
night moving the wounded from the station to 
the hospitals — they worked for hours under fire 
moving wounded, unperturbed and unshaken. 

After the battle of Dixmude and the armies 
had settled on the Neuport-Ypres line, Mrs. 
Knocker started the Pervyse Poste de Secours 
Anglis, a dressing station so close to the firing 
line that the wounded could literally be lifted to 
it from the trenches. 

There they have worked and cared for the men 
in conditions almost incredible. In February, 
1915, they were decorated by King Albert, and 
since March they have been permanently at- 
tached to the Third Division of the Belgian 
Army. 

In June, 1915, they were mentioned in dis- 
patches for saving life under heavy fire. They 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 81 

have saved hundreds of lives by being where they 
can render aid so swiftly, and the military author- 
ities do not move them, not only because they 
wish to pay tribute to their valor but because 
they are so valuable. 

Most of all, "Blighty" goes to the soldier in his 
letters and there is nothing so dear to the soldier 
as his letters, and nothing is worse than to have 
"no mail." The woman who does not write, and 
the woman who writes the wrong things, are 
equally poor things. The woman who wants to 
help her man sends him bright cheerful letters, 
not letters about difficulties he can't help, and 
that will only worry him, but letters with all the 
news he would like to have, and the messages 
that count for so much. Every woman who 
writes to a soldier has in that an influence and 
a power worthy of all her best. Not only our 
letters but our thoughts and our prayers are 
a wall of strength to, and behind our men. 

In this war some have talked of spiritual 
manifestations that saved disaster in our great 
retreat. In that people may believe or disbelieve, 

6 



82 Women and War Work 

but no person of intelligence fails to realize the 
power of thought, and love, and hope, and the 
spirit of women can be a great power to their 
men in arms. There are so many ways of giving 
and sending that none of us need to fail. 

Then he is in it — in the trenches — over the top 
— and he may be safe or he may be wounded — a 
"Blighty one," as our men say, and we get him 
home to nurse and care for — or he may make 
the supreme sacrifice and only the message goes 
home. 

To everyone it must go with something of the 
consolation of the poem written by Rifleman S. 
Donald Cox of the London Eifle Brigade. 

"To My Mother— 1916 

If I should fall, grieve not that one so weak 

And poor as I 

Should die. 
Nay, though thy heart should break, 
Think only this: that when at dusk they speak 

Of sons and brothers of another one, 

Then thou canst say, 'I, too, had a son, 
He died for England's sake.' " 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 83 

He may be a prisoner and then we follow him 
again. There are over 40,000 of our men pris- 
oners and we have over 200,000 of the enemy. 
The treatment and conditions of our prisoners 
in Germany were sometimes terrible — the hor- 
rors of Wittenberg we can never forget, and we 
are deeply indebted to the American Red Cross, 
for all it did before America's entry into the war, 
for our prisoners. 

From the beginning of the war we have had to 
feed our prisoners, and for the first two years 
parcels of food went from mothers, sisters and 
relatives of the men. Regimental Funds were 
raised and parcels sent through these. Girls' 
Clubs and the League of Honour and Churches 
and groups of many kinds sent also. The Savoy 
Association had a large fund and did a great 
work. 

Parcels, which must weigh under eleven 
pounds, go free to prisoners of war and there are 



84 Women and War Work 

some regulations about what may be sent. Now 
the whole work is regulated by the Prisoners of 
War Help Committee — an official committee, 
and parcels are sent out under their supervision 
to every man in captivity. 

Books, games and clothing also go out from 
us. In most of the Camps and at Ruhleben, 
where our civilians are interned, studies are car- 
ried on, and classes of instruction, and technical 
and educative books are much needed and de- 
manded. Schools and colleges have sent out 
large supplies of these. 

We have also raised funds for the Belgian 
Prisoners of War in Germany. 

We have exchanged prisoners with Germany 
and have secured the release and internment in 
Switzerland of some hundreds of our worst 
wounded, and permanently disabled, and tuber- 
cular and consumptive men. In Switzerland, 
among the beautiful mountains, they are finding 
happiness and health again and many of them 
are working at new trades and training. 

We sent out their wives to see them and some 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 85 

girls went to marry their released men. Some 
of our prisoners have escaped from Germany 
and reached us safely after many risks and 
adventures. 

"Blighty" goes out to our men also in our 
Chaplains, the "Padres" of our forces, and many 
times soldiers have talked to me of their splendid 
"Padre" in Gallipoli, or France or Egypt. They 
have died with the men, bringing water and help 
and trying to bring in the wounded. They have 
been decorated with the V. C, our highest 
honor, the simple bronze cross given "For 
Valour." They write home to mothers and wives 
and relatives of the men who fall, and send last 
messages and words of consolation. 

Their task is a great one, for to men who face 
death all the time, and see their dearest friends 
killed beside them, things eternal are living real- 
ities and there are questions for which they want 
answers. There is so much the Padre has to 
give and his messages are listened to in a new 
way and words are winged and living where these 
men are. 



86 Women and War Work 

We have so many of our men from overseas 
among us who are far from their own homes, and 
in London we have Clubs for the Canadians, the 
Australians, the New Zealanders, for the two 
together, immortally to be known as the "An- 
zacs," and for the South Africans, where they 
can all find a bit of home. We have also just 
opened American Huts and the beautiful officers' 
Club at Lord Leconfield's house, lent for the 
purpose. 

For the permanently disabled soldier we are 
doing a great deal. St. Dunstan's, the wonderful 
training school for the blind, has been the very 
special work of Sir Arthur Pearson, who is him- 
self blind, and Lady Pearson. 

The Lord Roberts Workshops for the disabled 
are doing splendid work in training and bringing 
hope to seriously crippled men. 

The British Women's Hospital for which our 
women have raised .$500,000, is on the site of 
the old Star and Garter Hotel at Richmond, and 
is to be for permantly disabled men. 



"Bringing 'Blighty' to the Soldier" 87 

There, overlooking our beautiful river, men 
who have been broken in the wars for us, may 
find a permanent home in this monument of our 
women's love and gratitude. 



WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER 



"She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh will- 
ingly with her hands. 

She is like the merchant's ships ; she bringeth her 
food from afar. 

"She girdeth her loins with strength, and 
strengthened her arms. 

"Strength and honour are her clothing; and she 
shall rejoice in time to come." 

— Prov., Chap. 31. 



CHAPTER V 

WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER 

THE first result of the outbreak of war for 
women was to throw thousands of them 
out of work. 
Nobody knew — not even the ablest financial 
and commercial men — just what a great Euro- 
pean war was going to mean, and luxury trades 
ceased to get orders; w omen j ournalists. Wflmen 
writers, wo men lec turers, and women workers of 
every type were thrown out of work and unem- 
ployment was very great. 

A National Belief Fund was started for gen- 
eral distress and the Queen dealt in the ablest 
manner with the women's problem. She issued 
this appeal : "In the firm belief that prevention 
of distress is better than its relief, and employ- 
ment is better than charity, I have inaugurated 
the 'Queen's Work for Women Fund.' Its object 
is to provide employment for as many as pos- 
sible of the women of this country who have been 



ij 



♦ *> s 

92 Women and War Work 

thrown out of work by the war. I appeal to the 
women of Great Britain to help their less for- 
tunate sisters through the fund. 

"Mary R." 

This appeal was instantly responded to and 
large sums were subscribed. A very representa- 
tive Committee of Women was established, with 
Miss Mary MacArthur, the well known Trade 
Union leader, as Hon. Secretary and the Queen 
was in daily touch with its work. 

In the dislocation of industry which had 
caused the committee's formation, it was found 
that there was great slackness in one trade or a 
part of it and great pressure in other parts of it 
or other trades. The problem was to use the 
unemployed firms and workers for the new 
national needs. 

The committee considered it part of their work 
to endeavor to increase the number of firms 
getting Government contracts, and they created 
a special Contracts Department, under the direc- 
tion of Mr. J. J. Mallon, of the Anti-sweating 
League. They, as a result, advised in regard to 



Woman-power for Man-power 93 

the placing of contracts and they undertook to 
get articles for the Government, or ordered by 
other sources, manufactured by firms adversely 
affected by the war or in their own workrooms. 
They worked with the firms accustomed to 
making men's clothing and now unemployed, and 
found that they could easily take military con- 
tracts if certain technical difficulties were 
removed. They interviewed the War Office au- 
thorities, modifications were suggested and ap- 
proved and the full employment in the tailoring 
trade which followed gave a greatly improved 
supply of army clothing. Contracts were secured 
from the war office for khaki cloth, blankets, and 
various kinds of hosiery, and these were carried 
out by manufacturers who otherwise would have 
had to close down. 

The Queen gave orders for her own gifts to 
the troops, and considerable work was done 
through trade workshops, care being taken to 
see that this work was only done where ordinary 
trade was fully employed. Two contracts from 
the War Office, typical of others, were for 20,000 



94 Women and War Work 

shirts and for 2,000,000 pairs of army socks. 
Over 130 firms received contracts through the 
committee. 

New openings for trades were tested and the 
possibility of the transference of work formerly 
done in Germany. 

In its Kelief Work the committee had its 
greatest problems. It was clear that if rates paid 
were high, women would come in from badly 
paid trades, and it was clear that if they sold 
the work, it w T ould injure trade — so in the end 
it was decided to pay a low wage, 11/6 a week — 
and to give away, through the right agencies, the 
garments and things made in the workrooms. 

The inefficiency of many workers was very 
clear and training schemes resulted — for typing, 
shorthand, in leather work, chair seat willowing, 
in cookery, dressmaking and dress-cutting, home 
nursing, etc. 

Professional women were helped through var- 
ious funds and workrooms were established by 
other organizations, several being started in 
London by the N. U. W. S. S. 




Cleaning a Locomotive 




Women As Carriage Cleaners 



Woman-power for Man-power 95 

As the months went on women began to be 
absorbed more and more into industry. Men 
were going into the army ceaselessly, our war 
needs were growing greater and our women 
found work opening out more and more. The 
Women's Service Bureau had been opened within 
a week of the outbreak of war and had done 
valuable work in placing women, before the 
Board of Trade issued its first official appeal to 
women, additional to those already in industry, 
to volunteer for War Service. It was sent out 
by Mr. Runciman, President of the Board of 
Trade, and read as follows: 

The President of the Board of Trade 
wishes to call attention to the fact that in 
the present emergency, if the full fighting 
power of the nation is to be put forth on the 
field of battle, the full working power of 
the nation must be made available to carry 
on its essential trades at home. Already, 
in certain important occupations there are 
not enough men and women to do the work. 



96 Women and War Work 

This shortage will certainly spread to other 
occupations as more and more men join the 
fighting forces. 

In order to meet both the present and the 
future needs of national industry during the 
war, the Government wish to obtain partic- 
ulars of the women available, with or with- 
out previous training, for paid employment. 
Accordingly, they invite all women who are 
prepared, if needed, to take paid employ- 
ment of any kind — industrial, agricultural, 
clerical, etc. — to enter themselves upon the 
Register of Women for War Service which 
is being prepared by the Board of Trade 
Labour Exchanges. 

Any woman living in a town where there 
is a Labour Exchange can register by going 
there in person. If she is not near a Labour 
Exchange she can get a form of registration 
from the local agency of the Unemployment 
Fund. Forms will also be sent out through 
a number of women's societies. 

The object of registration is to find out 



Woman-power for Man-power 97 

what reserve force of women's labour, trained 
or untrained, can be made available if re- 
quired. As from time to time actual open 
ings for employment present themselves, 
notice will be given through the Labor Ex- 
changes, with full details as to the nature 
of work, conditions, and pay, and, so far as 
special training is necessary, arrangements 
will, if possible, be made for the purpose. 

Any woman who by working helps to re- 
lease a man or to equip a man for fighting 
does national war service. Every woman 
should register who is able and willing to 
take employment. 

The forms were sent out in large numbers 
through the women's societies of the country, 
and it was stated on them that women were 
wanted at once for farm- work, dairy work, brush- 
making, leather stitching, clothing, machinery 
and machining for armaments. 

By next day the registrations were 4,000, 
mostly middle-class women, and in the first week 

7 



98 Women and War Work 

20,000 registered and an average of 5,000 a week 
after, but the mass of women who registered 
waited with no real lead or use of them for a 
long time. The Government seemed to suffer 
from a delusion a great many people have, that 
if you have enough machinery and masses of 
names something is being done, but you do not 
solve any problem by registers. You solve it by 
getting the workers and the work together. 

The Government had not approached em- 
ployers at first, but had left it to them entirely 
to take the initiative in this great replacement. 
This they had to a considerable extent done, 
using the Labour Exchanges and the other 
agencies and women were more and more 
quickly, steadily, ceaselessly replacing men. 

The appeals for women for munition work 
were most swiftly responded to and educated 
women volunteered in thousands, as did working 
girls and women. 

The question of assisting employment by fit- 
ting more women for commercial and industrial 
occupations was considered by the Government, 



Woman-power for Man-power 90 

and in October, 1915, the Clerical and Com- 
mercial Occupations Committee was appointed 
by the Home Office — a similar committee being 
set up for Scotland. It arranged with the 
London County Council and with local author- 
ities that their Education Committees should 
initiate emergency courses all over the country 
for training in general clerical work, bookkeep- 
ing and office routine. The courses lasted from 
three to ten weeks, and the age of the students 
varied from eighteen to thirty-five. 

Many free courses were inaugurated by busi- 
ness firms in large London stores, notably 
Harrods and Whiteleys, where their courses in- 
cluded all office and business training. Six week 
courses of free training for the grocery trade, for 
the boot trade, lens making, waiting, hairdress- 
ing, etc., were also given. 

Our woman labor has been found to be quite 
mobile and girls have moved in thousands from 
one part of the country to another, and the muni- 
tion girl travelling home on holiday on her 
special permit is a familiar figure. 



100 Women and War Work 

The registration, placing and moving of our 
workers is all done by our Labour Exchanges, 
now renamed Employment Exchanges and trans- 
ferred from the Board of Trade to the Ministry 
of Labour. 

When the National Service Department was 
set up, a Women's Branch was established with 
Mrs. H. J. Tennant, and Miss Violet Markham 
as Co-directors, and they made various appeals, 
registered women for the land, munitions, W. A. 
A. C. and for wood cutting and pitprop making. 
A great demonstration of "Women's Service" 
was held in the Albert Hall in January 17, 
1917, at which Mrs. Tennant and Miss Markham, 
Lord Derby, Minister of War; Mr. Prothero, 
President of the Board of Agriculture, and Mr. 
John Hodge, Minister of Labour, spoke and at 
which the Queen was present. It was an appeal 
to women for more work and a registration of 
their determination to go on doing all that was 
needed. The men's message was one to equals — 
they asked great things. A message from Queen 
Mary was read for the first time at any public 



WOMAN-POWEK FOR MAN-POWER 101 

meeting and it was the only occasion on which 
she has attended one. 

The number of women now in our industry 
directly replacing men, according to our latest 
returns, is over one and a quarter millions. This 
does not include domestic service, where our 
maids grow less and less numerous and Sir 
Auckland Geddes, Director of National Service, 
tells us he is considering cutting down servants 
in any establishment to not more than three, and 
it does not include very small shops and firms. 

The processes in industry in which women 
work are numbered in hundreds. The War 
Office in 1916 issued an official memorandum for 
the use of Military Representatives and Trib- 
unals setting forth the processes in which women 
worked and the trades and occupations, and 
giving photographs of women doing unaccus- 
tomed and heavy work, to guide the Tribunals in 
deciding exemptions of men called up for Mili- 
tary Service. 

In professional work today women are every- 
where. There are 198,000 women in Government 



102 Women and War Work 

Departments, 83,000 of these new since the war. 
They are doing typing, shorthand, and secretarial 
work, organizing and executive work. They 
are in the Censor's office in large numbers and 
doing important work at the Census of Produc- 
tion. There are 146,000 on Local Government 
work. The woman teacher has invaded that 
stronghold of man in England, the Boys' High 
and Grammar Schools, and is doing good work 
there. They are replacing men chemists in 
works, doing research, working at dental me- 
chanics, are tracing plans. They are driving 
motor cars in large numbers. Our Prime Min- 
ister has a woman chauffeur. They are driving 
delivery vans and bringing us our goods, our 
bread and our milk. They carry a great part of 
our mail and trudge through villages and cities 
with it. They drive our mail vans, and I know 
two daughters of a peer who drive mail vans in 
London. I know other women who never did 
any work in their lives who for three years have 
worked in factories, taking the same work, the 
same holidays, the same pay as the other girls. 



Woman-power for Man-power 103 

Women are gardeners, elevator attendants, com- 
missionaires and conductors on our buses and 
trams, and in provincial towns drive many of 
the electric trams. 

In the railways they are booking clerks, car- 
riage and engine cleaners and greasers, and car- 
riage repairers, cooks and waiters in dining cars, 
platform, parcel and goods porters, telegraphists 
and ticket collectors and inspectors, and la- 
bourers and wagon sheet repairers. They work 
in quarries, are coal workers, clean ships, are 
park-keepers and cinema operators. They are 
commercial travellers in large numbers. They 
are in banks to a great extent and are now taking 
banking examinations. 

There was a very strong feeling as the replace- 
ment by women went on that there must be no 
lowering of wage standards which would not 
only be grossly unfair to women but imperil the 
returning soldier's chance of getting his post 
back. 

Mrs. Fawcett, on behalf of the Women's In- 
terests Committee of the N. U. W. S. S., called 



104 Women and War Work 

a conference on the question of War Service and 
wages in 1915, and Mr. Runciman stated at the 
conference : 

As regards the wages and conditions on 
which women should be employed, as a gen- 
eral principle the Exchanges did not, and 
could not, take direct responsibility as to 
the wages and conditions, beyond giving in 
each case such information as was in their 
possession. In regard, however, to Govern- 
ment contractors, it had been laid down that 
the piece rates for women should be the 
same as for men, and further special in- 
structions had been given to the Exchanges 
to inform inexperienced applicants of the 
current wages in each case, so that they 
should be fully apprised as to the wage 
which it was reasonable for them to ask. 
A general safeguard against permanent 
lowering of wages by the admission of 
women to take the place of men on service 
would be made by asking employers, so far 



Woman-power for Man-power 105 

as possible, to keep the men's places open 
for them on their return. 

Wages in most cases are at the same rate as 
men, and as women are organized in Britain in 
large numbers, the Trades Unions and Women's 
Committees are always alive and ready to act 
on the question of payment and conditions. Our 
workers, men and women, are very well paid 
and despite high prices, were never more com- 
fortable, and never saved more. The call for 
women to replace men still goes on in Britain. 
Miners are going to be combed out again. The 
Trade Unions have been again approached by 
the Premier and Sir Auckland Geddes on this 
question of man power. The Battalions must be 
filled up — in France we need 2,000,000 men all 
the time and of these 1,670,000 are from our 
own Islands. 

It is calculated there are in Britain today — 
Ireland is not tapped in woman power any more 
than in man power — less than a million women 
who could do more important work for the war 



106 Women and War Work 

than they are now doing. Most of these are al- 
ready doing work of one kind or another, but 
could probably do more. 

Our homes, our industries, munitions, the land, 
hospitals, Government service and the Waae's 
are absorbing us in our millions. Britain could 
not have raised her Army and Navy and could 
not now keep her men in the field without the 
mobilization of her women and their ceaseless, 
tireless work behind her men, and as substitutes 
for them, in the working life of the community. 



WOMEN IN MUNITIONS 

"For all we have and are, 

For all our children's fate — 
Rise up and meet the war, 
The Hun is at the gate. 

"Comfort, content, delight, 
The ages' slow-bought gain, 
Have shrivelled in a night, 
Only ourselves remain. 

"Though all we knew depart, 
The old commandments stand, 
In courage keep your heart, 
In strength lift up your hand." 

— Eudyard Kipling. 




CHAPTER VI 

WOMEN IN MUNITIONS 

"Hats off to the Women of Britain!" — Sir Arthur 
Con an Boyle in The Times, November 28, 1916. 

HEN war broke out the Government had 
three National workshops producing mu- 
nitions — today it has 100, and it controls 
over 5,000 establishments through the Ministry 
of Munitions, many of which are continually 
growing in size. 

The total output has increased over thirty- 
fold but in many cases increase in production 
has been far greater. In guns, the production 
of 4.5 field howitzers is over fifty times as large ; 
of machine sims and howitzers over seventy 
times and of heavy howitzers (over 6 inch) over 
420 times as large. 

More small shell is now made in a fortnight 
than formerly in a year, and the increase in 
output of heavy shell has been still larger. 
Equally striking results have been attained in 



110 Women and War Work 

the production of machine guns, aeroplanes 
motor bodies, and the other war supplies, for 
which demand and replacement have necessarily 
grown with the demand for guns and shells. To 
these have to be added the ships and the anti- 
submarine and anti-aircraft machines and de- 
vices that have been demanded by the enemy's 
method of warfare. 

This work has only been possible in a country 
that has raised five million men, 75 per cent 
from our own islands, because of what women 
have done. 

Today there are between 800,000 and 1,000,000 
women in munitions works in our country, and 
the history of their entry and work is a wonder- 
ful one. Women themselves were quicker than 
the Government to realize how much they would 
be needed in munitions, and started to train 
before openings were ready. 

Women realized vividly what Lloyd George's 
speech of June, 1915, made clear, the urgent, 
terrible need of our men for more munitions — 
the Germans could send over ten shells to our 



Women in Munitions 111 

one — and women volunteered in thousands for 
munition work. 

The London Society for Women's Suffrage, 
which was running "Women's Service," had 
women volunteers for munitions in enormous 
numbers and tried to secure openings for them. 
It investigated and found that acetylene welders 
were badly needed. There were very few in Brit- 
ain, and welding is essential for aircraft and 
other work, so they started to find out if there 
were classes for training women, and found none 
in Technical Schools were open to women. They 
found welders were needed very much in certain 
aircraft factories in the neighborhood of London 
and the manager of one assured them that if 
women were trained satisfactorily for oxy- 
acetylene welding, he would give them a trial. 
So "Women's Service" decided to open a small 
workshop and secured Miss E. C. Woodward, a 
metal worker of long standing, as instructor. 
The school was started in a small way with six 
pupils. Oxy-acetylene welding is the most ef- 



112 Women and War Work 

fective way of securing a perfect weld without 
any deleterious effect upon the metal. 

The great heat needed for the purpose of 
uniting tAvo or more pieces of metal so as to 
make of them an autogenous whole is obtained, 
in this process, by the burning of acetylene gas 
in conjunction with oxygen. 

Carbide, looking like little lumps of granite, is 
placed in a tray at the bottom of the generator 
for acetylene gas, which is of the form of a small 
portable gasometer. The tap, admitting water 
to the carbide trays, is turned on, and gas at 
once generates, and forces up the generator in 
the way so familiar to those who often see a 
gasometer. This gas passes through a tube to 
the blow-pipe of the welder, or to any other use 
for which it is destined. 

In oxy-acetylene welding, the process employs 
the flame produced by the combustion in a suit- 
able blow-pipe of oxygen and acetylene. When a 
light is applied to the nozzle of the pipe a yellow 
flame, a foot long, flares up, and in the centre of 
it, close to the nozzle, appears a very small, 



Women in Munitions 113 

dazzling, bluish flame, which can onty safely be 
gazed upon by eyes protected by coloured glasses. 
The temperature of this flame at the apex is 
about 6,300 degrees Pahr., and it is with this 
that the metals to be welded together are brought 
to a suitable degree of heat. 

The workers' eyes are protected by black 
goggles, their hair confined by caps or handker- 
chiefs, and overalls or leather-aprons protect 
their clothes from the sparks and also from the 
smuts which naturally accrue on surrounding 
objects. Each welder holds in her right hand the 
blow-pipe of the craft, from which depends two 
long flexible tubes, one conducting oxygen from 
the tall cylinder in the corner, and the other 
acetylene from the generator. In her left hand 
she holds the welding-stick of soft Swedish iron, 
from which tiny molten drops fall upon the glow- 
ing edges of the metal to be welded together. 
The work is fascinating even to the onlooker, and 
to see the result, metal so welded you feel it is 
impossible it ever could have been two pieces, is 
still more fascinating. 

8 



114 Women and War Work 

The first welders triumphantly passed their 
tests and gave every satisfaction in the factory, 
and the training went on and the School was 
enlarged. 

The oxy-aeetylene welders turned out by this 
School have gone all over the country and 220 
were trained and placed in the first year. Those 
selected were, with few exceptions, educated 
women, which was undoubtedly a material factor 
in the success of their work. This School opened 
training to women and welding is now taught 
to women in many of our Technical Schools. 
A class in Elementary Engineering has also been 
carried on by Women's Service with great success 
and the women placed in workshops. 

The Ministry of Munitions has also arranged, 
in conjunction with the London County Council 
and other Educational Authorities, to have free 
munition training for women at every centre in 
the Kingdom. The courses vary from six to nine 
weeks and maintenance grants are paid during 
the period of training. 



Women in Munitions 115 

In October, 1915, the Central Labour Supply 
Committee which dealt with women's and men's 
conditions, issued certain recommendations in 
Circular L. 2. These dealt with the conditions 
and rates of pay of women and fully skilled and 
unskilled men. The provision of this much- 
discussed circular that affected women doing 
skilled work was in Clause 1, which provides 
that "Women employed on work customarily i 
done by fully skilled tradesmen shall be paid the 
time rates of the tradesman whose work they 
undertake." 

These provisions were then only binding on 
the Government establishments, and could not be 
enforced by the Ministry of Munitions in con- 
trolled establishments. On December 31, 1915, 
a conference was held between the Prime Min- 
ister, the Minister of Munitions and representa- 
tives of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 
when an agreement in regard to "dilution" was 
arranged. Circular L. 2 was adopted at this 
conference as the basis of the undertaking given 
by the Ministrv in regard to dilution of labor. 



116 Women and War Work 

An employer under it can be punished as con- 
travening the Munitions Act if he fails to carry 
out the direction of the Minister. The power of 
enforcing the provisions of L. 2 were acquired in 
January, 1916, and it is quite obvious that in 
this circular a principle of the greatest import- 
ance to men and women is laid down. Women 
were wholly averse to being "blacklegs" in 
industry. 

The great work of "Dilution" in Munitions — 
and by dilution Ave mean the use in industry of 
unskilled, semi-skilled and woman labor, so that 
highly skilled men may not be used except for 
the most important work — is done by the Dilu- 
tion Department of the Ministry of Munitions, 
which issues Dilution of Labour Bulletins and 
Process Sheets periodically, showing the work 

\ women are doing. A series of exhibitions of 
women's work have also been arranged by the 

I Technical Section of the Labour Supply Depart- 
ment in all the big towns in England. In 
Sheffield over 16,000 people came to see the Ex- 




i 




RlVETTING ON BOILERS 




Facing Boiler Blue Flanges 



Women in Munitions 117 

hibition — the largest number of these being fore- 
men and workmen sent by their firms. 

The Exhibitions consist of two main sections, 
one of which shows actual samples of munitions 
made by women, and the other of photographs 
of women doing work on apparatus or processes 
that could not be shown. A complete Clerget 
engine, for instance, was lent by the Air Board 
to illustrate the final assembly of the numerous 
parts of these engines being made wholly or 
partly by women. In the same way, many parts 
of complete Stokes Guns, Vickers Machine Guns 
and Service Rifles were exhibited. The exhibits 
were divided into fifteen groups. The first group 
dealing with engines for aircraft. The second 
group showed engines for motor cars, tanks, 
tractors, motor buses, motor lorries and motor 
vehicles. 

A separate group consisted of a variety of ac- 
cessories for internal combustion engines, in- 
cluding air pump for the Clerget engine, which 
is completely manufactured and assembled by 
women, largely under women supervision; and 



118 Women and War Work 

magnetos, a very important and accurate indus- 
try, before the war largely in German hands, of 
which women now undertake the entire manu- 
facture. 

The fourth group dealt with steam engines, 
including details of locomotives, high speed 
engines, steam winches, and steam turbines. 

The next two groups dealt respectively with 
guns and components and with small arms. 

The next three groups included gauges, drills, 
cutters, punches and dies, trucks, jigs, tap pieces 
and general tool-room work. The gauges in- 
cluded plug, ring, cylinder and screw gauges to 
the closest degrees of accuracy, which in practice 
are verified by the rigid inspection of the Na- 
tional Physical Laboratory. 

A fair illustration of the accuracy that is 
habitually required in a large volume of work is 
to be seen in the final gauging and inspection of 
a screw gauge for a fuse, in which the women 
inspectors were described in the catalogue as 
examining these screws by an optical projection 
apparatus, magnifying fifty times, with the help 






Women in Munitions 119 

of which the inspector notes the defects in size 
and form, and the necessary corrections. 

The cutting tools included sets of cutters for 
the manufacture of shells, as well as twist drills, 
reamers, milling cutters, gear cutters, screwing 
dies, taps and lathe tools. Some of this work is 
of high accuracy, and a set of solid screwing dies 
has the particular interest that almost all the 
operations are carried out by women after they 
have been in the shop for a fortnight. The gen- 
eral tool-room work included an exhibit of sev- 
enty-one punches and dies for cartridge making. 
Another set of dies was shown for small-arms 
ammunition, and specimens were also exhibited 
of chucks, die-heads and other work. 

Two other groups dealt with the metal fittings 
and wooden structural parts of aircraft, and to 
see girls work on these is intensely interesting — 
anything more fragile looking and more beautiful 
than the long uncovered wing it would be difficult 
to find. A notable feature of the metal group was 
a number of parts that are marked off from draw- 
ings by women working under a woman charge- 



120 Women and War Work 

hand, and themselves making their own scribing- 
templates when necessary. Many examples of 
welding work were also shown. 

There were Optical Munitions and medical and 
surgical glass and X-ray tubes made entirely by 
women, and the Exhibitions record the progress 
of women in Munitions in the most wonderful 
and striking way. 

Mr. Ben. H. Morgan, Chief Officer, in a recent 
speech on Munitions and Production said : 

"Labor had to be found to staff the thou- 
sands of factories in which this stupendous 
production was to be carried out, and it has 
been possible to find it only by subdividing 
work closely, and entrusting a large variety 
of machinery and fitting to women, with the 
help of the fullest possible equipment of jigs 
and all available appliances for mechanic- 
ally defining and facilitating the work, and 
of instruction by skilled men. By this means 
an output has been obtained that will com- 
pare favorably with that of any class of 



Women in Munitions 121 

workers in any country. Comparing, for 
instance, our women's figures of output on 
certain sizes of shell and types of fuses with 
those of men in the United States, I found 
recently that the women's machining times 
were not only as good but in many cases 
better than those of men in some of the best 
organized American shops. 

"This is an extraordinary result to have 
been obtained from women who, for the most 
part, had never known either the work or the 
discipline of factory life, and were wholly 
unused to mechanical operations. More than 
one circumstance has doubtless contributed 
to making it possible; but it is my assured 
conviction that foremost among the incen- 
tives by which women have been helped has 
been their constant thought of their flesh 
and blood, their husbands, brothers, sons, 
sweethearts, in the trenches. I know a typ- 
ical example in a Yorkshire mother, who 
early in the war sent her only son to the 
fighting line. The lad was a skilled me- 



122 Women and War Work 

chanic, and she took his place at his lathe 
in the Leeds shops where he worked. She 
is not only keeping this job going, but her 
output on the job she is doing is a record for 
the whole country." 

The women workers' productions has been 
admirable and is steady and continues so. The 
Manchester Guardian of November 15, 1915, 
astounded women and men alike by its announce- 
ment that "figures were produced in proof of 
the very startling assertion that the output of 
the women munition workers is slightly more 
than double that of men." 

In the latest Dilution of Labour Bulletin this 
is recorded: 

"A Good Beginning 

"A firm in the London and South Eastern 
district making propellers for aeroplanes 
has recently begun the employment of 
women, and the results are exceeding all 
expectations. As an instance it is reported 



Women in Munitions 123 

that five women are now doing the work of 
scraping, formerly done by six men, with ^ 
an increase of 70 per cent in output." 
The way in which managers, foremen and 
skilled men have trained and helped the women 
and work with them cannot be too highly 
praised — the success of "dilution" — the ability 
of women to help their country in this way, was 
only possible through the good will and co- 
operation of our great Trade Unions and skilled 
men. 

Women supervisors and examiners are trained 
at Woolwich, and the first of these were found 
by "Women's Service," and we find women con- 
trol and manage large numbers of women in the 
big works extremely well. One girl of twenty- 
three, the daughter of a famous engineer, is 
controlling the work of 6,000 women who are 
working on submarines, guns, aircraft, and all 
manner of munitions. 

One great engineer who believes in women and 
women's future in engineering has started what 
we might term an engineering college for women. 



124 Women and War Work 

He has built a model factory away in the hills 
"somewhere in Scotland" with four tiers of 
ferro-cement floors. It is built with the idea 
of taking 300 women students and eight months 
after it opened, it had sixty women students. It 
is a factory entirely for women, run by, and to 
a large extent managed by women, with the ex- 
ception of two men instructors. In the ground 
floor the girls are working at parts of high power 
aeroplane engines, under their works superin- 
tendent, a woman who took her Mathematical 
Tripos at Newnham College, and was lecturer at 
one of our girls' public schools. The women 
rank as engineer apprentices and their hours 
are forty-four a week. The first six months are 
probationary with pay at 20/ — ($5) a week, and 
the students are doing extremely well. 

"Women are now part and parcel of our great 
army," said the Earl of Derby, on July 13, 1916, 
"without them it would be impossible for prog- 
ress to be made, but with them I believe victory 
can be assured." 

Mr. Asquith, too, has paid his tribute to the 



Women in Munitions 125 

woman munition maker and to others who are 
doing men's work. In a memorable speech on 
the Second Reading- of the Special Register Bill, 
he admitted that the women of this country have 
rendered as effective service in the prosecution 
of the war as any other class of the community. 
"It is true they cannot fight in the gross ma- 
terial sense of going out with rifles and so forth, 
but they fill our munition factories, they are 
doing the work which the men who are fighting 
had to perform before, they have taken their 
places, they are the servants of the State and 
they have aided in the most effective way in the 
prosecution of the war." 

Our munition women are in the shipyards, the 
engineering shops, the aeroplane sheds, the shell 
shops, flocking in thousands into the cities, 
leaving homes and friends to work in the muni- 
tion cities we have built since the war. When 
our great arsenals and factories empty, women 
pour out in thousands. Night and day they have 
worked as the men have and it has been no easy 
or light task. We know that still more will be 



126 Women and War Work 

demanded of us, but we think, as our four 
million men do, that these things are well worth 
doing for the freedom of the souls of the nations. 

In the munition factories that feeling and 
conviction burns like a flame and the enemy who 
thinks to demoralize our men and our women 
by bombing our homes and our workshops finds 
the workers, men and women, only made more 
determined. 

The women handle high explosives in the 
"danger buildings" for ten and a half hours in 
a shift, making and inserting the detonating 
fuses, where a slip may result in their own death 
and that of their comrades. Working with 
T. N. T. they turn yellow — hands and face and 
hair — and risk poisoning. They are called the 
"canary girls," and if you ask why they do it 
they will tell you it isn't too much to risk when 
men risk everything in the trenches — and some- 
times the one they cared for most is in a grave 
in France or on some other front, and they 
"carry on." 

The Prime Minister paid a tribute to munition 



Women in Munitions 127 

makers in one of his speeches when he said: 

"I remember perfectly well when I was Min- 
ister of Munitions we had very dangerous work. 
It involved a special alteration in one element 
of our shells. We had to effect that alteration. 
If we had manufactured the whole thing anew 
it would have involved the loss of hundreds of 
thousands of rounds of ammunition at a time 
when we could not afford it. But the adaptation 
of the old element with a fuse is a very dangerous 
operation, and there were several fatal accidents. 
It was all amongst the women workers in the 
munition factories; there was never a panic. 
They stuck to their work. They knew the peril. 
They never ran away from it." 



THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN 
IN INDUSTRY 



"Are our faces grave, and our eyes intent? 
Is every ounce that is in us bent 
On the uttermost pitch of accomplishment? 
Though it's long and long the day is. 
Ah ! we know what it means if we fool or slack ; 
— A rifle jammed — and one comes not back; 
And we never forget — it's for us they gave. 
And so we will slave, and slave, and slave, 
Lest the men at the front should rue it. 
Their all they gave, and their lives we'll save, 
If the hordest of work can do it; — 
Though it's long and long the day is. 

— John Oxenham. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PROTECTION OF WOMEN 
IN INDUSTRY 

THE Ministry of Munitions has a great 
department devoted to the work of looking 
after our workers' interests. 

This department of the Ministry was estab- 
lished by Mr. Lloyd George. Mr. Rowntree, 
whose work is so well known, was put in charge. 

The health of the Munition Workers' Commit- 
tee was set up when the Ministry was established 
with the concurrence of the Home Secretary, 
"To consider and advise on questions of indus- 
trial fatigue, hours of labor, and other matters 
affecting the personal health and physical effi- 
ciency of workers in munition factories and 
work shops. 

Sir George Newman, M.D., is chairman of the 
committee and the two women members are Mrs. 
IT. J. Tennant and Miss R. E. Squire. Memo- 
randa on various industrial problems have been 



132 Women and War Work 

drawn up by the committee and acted upon — the 
first being on Sunday labour. 

In the early part of the war our men and 
women frequently worked seven days in the week 
and shifts were very long for women as for men. 
Practically no holidays were taken in answer to 
Lord Kitchener's appeals. The regulations pre- 
venting women from working on Sunday had 
been removed in a limited number of cases. The 
investigation of the committee in November, 
1915, showed that Sunday labor when it meant 
excessive hours was bad and it did not increase 
output, that the strain on foremen and managers 
in particular was very great, and they recom- 
mended a modification of the policy. 

In a later Memorandum, No. 12, on output in 
relation to hours of work, very interesting figures 
were given, practically all showing increased 
output as a result of shorter hours of labor. 

The committee reported in Memorandum No. 5 
that it was of the opinion that continuous work 
by women in excess of the normal legal limit 
of sixty hours per week ought to be discontinued 



The Protection of Women in Industry 133 

as soon as practicable, and that the shift sys- 
tem should be used instead of overtime. 

A special Memorandum, No. 4, was entirely 
concerned with the employment of women and 
dealt with hours, conditions, rest and meals, 
management and supervision, and it strongly 
urged every precaution and protection for 
women. 

The Welfare Department meantime had 
started on its work of securing, training and /^^ 
appointing Welfare Supervisors, Miss Alleyne 
looking after that branch of the work. 

The Department was "charged with the gen- 
eral responsibility of securing a high standard 
of conditions" for the workers. 

The growth of the work has been enormous. 
The Ministry of Munitions today has large num- 
bers of Welfare Supervisors with every Govern- 
ment establishment and the controlled estab- 
lishments have them also. In Government shops 
they are paid by the Ministry, in controlled 
establishments by the management and their 



134 Women and War Work 

appointment is notified to the Welfare Depart- 
ment. 

The Ministry has issued a leaflet on "Duties 
of Welfare Supervisors for Women," which is 
given at the end of this chapter. 

It will be seen that the Welfare Worker must 
be a rather wonderful person. She must be 
tactful, know how to handle girls, and be a 
person of judgment and decision. We have suc- 
ceeded in securing a very large number of admir- 
able women and excellent work is being done. 
The Welfare Workers are in their turn inspected 
by Welfare Inspectors and Miss Proud, the Chief 
Inspector in dangerous factories, who sees the 
precautions against risk of poisoning from Tri- 
nitrotoluol, Tertyl, the aeroplane wing dope, 
etc., are all carried out by the management, has 
written an admirable textbook on welfare work. 
The country for this purpose is divided into nine 
areas, and two women inspectors work in each. 

Woolwich Arsenal is one of our great centres 
of women's work and the Chief Welfare Super- 
visor there, Miss Lilian Barker, is the most 



The Protection of Women in Industry 135 

capable woman Supervisor in Britain, a states- 
man among Supervisors. Any visitor to the Ar- 
senal cannot help being struck by the general 
impression of contentment, happiness and health 
of the woman worker there in her thousands. It 
is rare to see a sickly face among them, even 
among the girls in the Danger Zone. Miss Bar- 
ker is constantly adding to her own staff of 
supervisors and training others for provincial 
centres. She and her Assistants interview new 
hands and arrange changes and transfers of 
women. She enquires into all complaints, ad- 
vises as to clothing, keeps an eye on the vast 
canteen organization of Woolwich, and initiates 
schemes for recreation — notices of whist drives, 
dances and concerts are constantly up on the 
boards. The housing of the immigrant workers 
— no small problem, she and her assistants deal 
with. They suggest improvements in conditions 
and are awake to signs of illness or overfatigue. 
They follow the worker home and look after the 
young mother and the sick girl and women. 



136 Women and War Work 

Hostels have been built there and all over the 
country by the Government and by factory own- 
ers, and the Hostel Supervisors have a big and 
useful work to do. 

They are very well arranged with a room for 
each girl and nice rest rooms, dining rooms and 
good sickroom accommodations. Rules are cut 
down to a minimum. Most Supervisors find out 
ways of working without them. 

"Smoking is allowed at this end of the rest- 
room," said one Superintendent, "but since we 
have permitted this recreation, it seems to have 
fallen out of favour," which seems to show 
munition girls are very human. 

Hutments have also been built for married 
couples. Lodgings are inspected and when suit- 
able, scheduled for workers coming to the area. 
In some cases the management in private fac- 
tories do not adopt formal welfare workers but 
get a woman of the right type and put her in 
charge of the female operatives, with generally 
excellent results. The value of the influence of 
this work on our girls cannot be over-estimated — 




Issuedisy t 
Mints trifof 
ifteofljiroet 

factor- 

"of as 



An Official Booklet for Munition Workers 



The Protection of Women in Industry 137 

it is an influence of the very best kind, and our 
experiences in munition and welfare work, every 
class of women working together, is going to be 
of great and permanent good. 

The professional woman and the girls who 
flock to London in large numbers for work in 
Government Departments, must be housed also, 
and there are many extremely good Hostels. 
Bedford House, the old Bedford College for 
Women, is now a delightful Hostel run by the 
Y. W. C. A., whose work for munition girls 
deserves very special mention. They had Hostels 
over the country before the war and have added 
to these. They have set up Clubs all over the 
country for the girls in munitions and industry 
in 150 centres, and these are very much appre- 
ciated and used by thousands of girls. 

The feeding of the munition worker is another 
great piece of work. It started, like so many of 
our things, in voluntary effort. The conditions 
of the men and women working all night and 
without any possibility of getting anything warm 
to eat and drink and, exhausted with their heavy 



138 Women and War Work 

work, made people feel something must be done, 
and the first efforts were to send round barrows 
with hot tea and coffee and sandwiches, etc. 
More and more it was realized that the provision 
of proper meals for the workers, men and women, 
was indispensable for the maintenance of output 
on which our fighting forces depended for their 
very lives — and the Government, the Y. M. C. A., 
the Y. W. C. A. and various other agencies, 
started to establish canteens. The Y. W. C. A. 
alone in its canteens serves 80,000 meals a week. 
Large numbers of private firms have established 
their own canteens. 

The Health of Munition Workers Committee 
reported, in November, 1915, that it was ex- 
tremely desirable to establish canteens in every 
factory in which it would be useful. Many can- 
teens existed before the war, but they have been 
added to enormously and the recommendations 
of the committee as to accessability, attractive- 
ness, form, food and service carried out. 

The Canteen Committee of the Liquor Control 
Board who have looked after this work have 



The Protection of Women in Industry 139 

issued an admirable official pamphlet, "Feeding 
the Munition Worker," in which plans for con- 
struction and all details are given. An ideal 
canteen should always provide facilities for the 
worker to heat his or her own food. 

The prices are very reasonable, and in most 
cases only cover cost of food and service, soup 
and bread is 4 cents — cut from joint and two 
vegetables, 12 to 16 cents. 
Puddings, 2 to 4 cents, 
Bread and cheese, 3 to 4 cents, 
Tea, coffee and cocoa, 2 cents a cup, 
and a variety is arranged in the week's menu. 

The Y. W. C. A. Huts are very popular. In 
some of them the girls get dinners for 10 cents, 
and the dinner includes joint, vegetables and 
pudding. 

There are comfortable chairs in them in which 
girls can rest and attractive magazines and 
books to read in the little restrooms. The 
workers in charge of these canteens are edu- 
cated women and the waiting and service is done 
by voluntary helpers. There is not only excel- 



140 Women and War Work 

/lent feeding for our workers in these canteens, 
but there is great economy in food and fuel. To 
cook 400 dinners together is much less wasteful 
than to cook them separately, and the cooks in 
these are generally trained economists. 

The children, too, are not forgotten. Our 
welfare workers follow the young mother home 
and find out if the children are all right and 
well taken care of. We have done even more in 
the war than before for our babies and the infant 
death rate is falling. We have established excel- 
lent creches and nurseries where they are needed. 

It is impossible to overestimate the value of 
all this work in industry. The Prime Minister, 
speaking last year on this subject, said, "It is a 
strange irony, but no small compensation, that 
the making of weapons of destruction should 
afford the occasion to humanize industry. Yet 
such is the case. Old prejudices have vanished, 
new ideas are abroad; employers and workers, 
the public and the State, are all favourable to 
new methods. The opportunity must not be 
allowed to slip. It may well be that, when the 



The Protection of Women in Industry 141 

tumult of war is a distant echo and the making 
of munitions a nightmare of the past, the effort 
now being made to soften asperities, to secure 
the welfare of the workers, and to build a bridge 
of sympathy and understanding between em- 
ployer and employed, will have left behind re- 
sults of permanent and enduring value to the 
workers, to the nation and to mankind at large." 
I am no believer in the gloomy predictions of 
industrial revolutions after the war. We will 
have revolutions — but of the right kind and one 
thing has been clearly shown, that the workers 
of our country are not only loyal citizens but 
realize every issue of this conflict as vividly as 
anyone else. On their work, men and women, our 
Navy, our Army and our country, have depended 
— and they have not failed us in any real thing. 

MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS. 



Duties of Welfare Supervisors for Women. 
(Sometimes called Employment Superintendents.) 



Note, — It is not suggested that all these duties 



142 Women and War W t ork 

should be imposed upon the Employment 
Superintendent directly she is appointed. The 
size of the Factory will to a certain extent 
determine the scope of her work, and in as- 
signing her duties regard will of course be had 
to her professional ability to cope with them. 

These officers are responsible solely to the 
firms that employ them, and in no sense to the 
Ministry of Munitions. 



The experience which has now been obtained 
in National and other Factories making muni- 
tions of war has demonstrated that the post of 
Welfare Supervisor is a valuable asset to Factory 
management wherever women are employed. 
Through this channel attention has been drawn 
to conditions of work, previously unnoted, which 
were inimical to the well-being of those em- 
ployed. The following notes have, therefore, been 
prepared for the information of employers who 
have not hitherto engaged such officers, but who 
desire to know the position a Welfare Supervisor 



The Protection of Women in Industry 143 

should take and the duties and authority which, 
it is suggested, might be delegated to her. 

POSITION. 

It has generally been found convenient that 
the Welfare Supervisor should be directly re- 
sponible to the General Manager, and should be 
given a definite position on the managerial staff 
in connection with the Labour Employment 
Department of the Factory. She is thus able 
to refer all matters calling for attention direct 
to the General Manager, and may be regarded 
by him as a liason between him and the various 
Departments dealing with the women employees. 

DUTIES. 

The duty of a Welfare Supervisor is to obtain 
and to maintain a healthy staff of workers and 
to help in maintaining satisfactory conditions 
for the work. 

In order to obtain a staff satisfactory both 
from the point of view of health and technical 
efficiency, it has been found to be an advantage 



144 Women and War Work 

to bring the Welfare Supervisor into the business 
of selecting women and girls for employment. 

I. The Obtaining of a Healthy Staff. 

Her function is to consider the general health, 
physical capacity and character of each appli- 
cant. As regards those under 16 years of age, 
she could obtain useful advice as to health from 
the Certifying Surgeon when he grants Certif- 
icates of fitness. The Management can, if they 
think fit, empower her to refer for medical ad- 
vice to their panel Doctor, other applicants con- 
cerning whose general fitness she is in doubt. 
This selection of employees furnishes the 
Welfare Supervisor with a valuable opportunity 
for establishing a personal link with the workers. 

Her function is thus concerned with selection 
on general grounds, while the actual engaging of 
those selected may be carried out by the Over- 
looker or other person responsible for the tech- 
nical side of the work. In this way both aspects 
of appointment receive full consideration. 

The Management may find further that it is 



The Protection of Women in Industry 145 

useful to consult the Welfare Supervisor as to 
promotions of women in the Factory, thus con- 
tinuing the principle of regarding not only tech- 
nical efficiency but also general considerations 
in the control of the women in the Factory. 

II. The Maintaining of a Healthy Staff. 

The Welfare Supervisor should ascertain what 
are the particular needs of the workers. These 
needs will then be found to group themselves 
under two headings: 

(a) Needs within the Factory — Intramural 
Welfare. 

(b) Needs outside the Factory — Extramural 
Welfare. 

INTRAMURAL WELFARE. 
I. Supervision of Working Conditions. 

The Welfare Supervisor may be made re- 
sponsible for the following matters: 

(a) General behaviour of women and girls in- 
side the factory. — While responsibility for the 
10 



146 Women and War Work 

technical side of the work must rest with the 
Technical Staff, the Welfare Supervisor should 
be responsible for all questions of general be- 
haviour. 

(5) Transfer. — The Welfare Supervisor 
would, if the health of a woman was affected 
by the particular process on which she is en- 
gaged, be allowed, after having consulted the 
Foreman concerned, to suggest to the Manage- 
ment the possibility of transfer of the woman 
to work more suited to her state of health. 

(c) Night Supervision. — The Welfare Su- 
pervisor should have a deputy for night work 
and should herself occasionally visit the Fac- 
tory at night to see that satisfactory conditions 
are maintained. 

(d) Dismissal. — It will be in keeping with 
the general suggestions as to the functions of 
the Welfare Supervisor if she is consulted on 
general grounds with regard to the dismissal 
of women and girls, 

(e) The maintenance of healthy conditions. 



The Protection of Women in Industry 147 

— This implies that she should, from the point 
of view of the health of the female employees, 
see to the general cleanliness, ventilation and 
warmth of the Factory and keep the Manage- 
ment informed of the results of her observa- 
tions. 

(/) The provision of seats. — She should 
study working conditions so as to be able to 
bring to the notice of the Management the 
necessity for the provision of seats where these 
are possible. 

II. Canteen. 

Unless the Factory is a small one it would 
hardly be possible for the Welfare Supervisor to 
manage the canteen. The Management will prob- 
ably prefer to entrust the matter to an expert 
who should satisfy the Management in consulta- 
tion with the Welfare Supervisor on the follow- 
ing matters: — 

(1) That the Canteen provides all the nec- 
essary facilities for the women workers; that 



148 Women and War Work 

is to say, suitable food, rapidly and punctually 
served. 

(2) That Canteen facilities are provided 
when necessary for the women before they 
begin work so that no one need start work 
without having taken food. 

(3) That the Canteen is as restful and as 
comfortable as possible so that it serves a 
double purpose of providing rest as well as 
food. 

III. Supervision of Ambulance Restroom and 
First Aid. 
While not responsible for actually attending 
to accidents, except in small Factories, the Wel- 
fare Supervisor should work in close touch with 
the Factory Doctor and Nurses. She should, 
however, be responsible for the following mat- 
ters : — 

(1) She should help in the selection of the 
Nurses, who should be recognised as belonging 
to the Welfare staff. 

(2) While not interfering with the Nurses 



The Protection of Women in Industry 149 

in the professional discharge of their duties, 
she should see that their work is carried out 
promptly and that the workers are not kept 
waiting long before they receive attention. 

(3) She should supervise the keeping of all 
records of accident and illness in the Ambu- 
lance Boom. 

(4) She should keep in touch with all cases 
of serious accident or illness. 

It would further be useful if she were allowed 
to be kept in touch with the Compensation De- 
partment inside the Factory with a view to ad- 
vising on any cases of hardship that may arise. 

IV. Supervision of Cloak-rooms and Sanitary 
Conveniences. 

The Welfare Supervisor should be held re- 
sponsible for the following matters: — 

(1) General cleanliness. 

(2) Prevention of Loitering. 

(3) Prevention of Pilfering. 

The Management will decide what staff is nee- 



150 Women and War Work 

essary to assist her, and it should be her duty 
to report to the Management on these matters. 

V. Provision of Overalls. 

The Welfare Supervisor should have the duty 
of supervising the Protective Clothing supplied 
to the women for their work. 

EXTRAMURAL WELFARE. 

The Welfare Supervisor should keep in touch 
with all outside agencies responsible for: — 

(1) Housing. 

(2) Transit facilities. 

(3) Sickness and Maternity cases. 

(4) Recreation. 

(5) Day Nurseries. 

In communicating with any of these agencies 
it will no doubt be preferable that she should do 
so through the Management. 

III. Records. 

A. The Welfare Supervisor should for the pur- 
pose of her work have some personal records of 



The Protection of Women in Industry 151 

every woman employee. If a card-index system 
is adopted, a sample card suggesting the neces- 
sary particulars which it is desirable should be 
kept by Welfare Supervisors is supplied to em- 
ployers on request. 

B. The Welfare Supervisor should have some 
way of observing the health in relation to the 
efficiency of the workers, and if the Management 
approved this could be done: 

(a) By allowing her to keep in touch with 
the Wages Department. She could then watch 
the rise and fall of wages earned by individual 
employees from the point of view that a steady 
fall in earnings may be the first indication of 
an impending breakdown in health. 

(6) By allowing her to keep in touch with 
the Time Office she should be able to obtain 
records of all reasons for lost time. From 
such records information can be obtained of 
sickness, inadequate transit and urgent do- 
mestic duties, which might otherwise not be 
discovered. Here again, if a card-index sys- 



152 Women and War Work 

teni is adopted a sample card for this purpose 
can be obtained from the Welfare and Health 
Section on request. 

(c) By keeping records of all cases of acci- 
dent and sickness occurring in the Factory. 
Sample Ambulance Books and Accident Rec- 
ord Cards can also be obtained from the 
Welfare and Health Section. 



THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY" 



"If it were not for the women, agriculture 
would be at an absolute standstill on many 
farms in England and Wales today." 

— President of the Board of Agriculture. 



CHAPTER VIII 

44 THE WOMEN'S LAND ARMY" 

THE Land Army of Women, which now 
numbers over 258,300 whole and part- 
time workers, has done splendid work. 
For some years before the war women had 
been very little used on the land in certain parts 
of England and Wales. In Scotland and in 
some of the English counties there had always 
been, and still were, quite fair numbers of 
women on the land. 

Within eighteen months of the outbreak of 
war, about 300,000 agricultural laborers had 
enlisted and the work had been carried on with 
difficulty by the farmer in the first year of the 
war. The farmer secured all the labor he could, 
old men returned to help, and the army released 
skilled men temporarily, from training, to help. 
Soldiers were used in groups for seasonal work, 
the farmer paying a good rate for them. Groups 
of women were also organized for seasonal work 



156 Women and War Work 

by various voluntary organizations, two of these 
being the Land Council and the Women's Na- 
tional Land Service Corps. The Women's Farm 
and Garden Union also did good work. The 
Land Service Corps made one of its most im- 
portant objects the organization of village women 
into working gangs under leaders. One inter- 
esting piece of work undertaken by the Corps 
last year was finding a large number of women 
for flax-pulling in Somerset. This the Flax- 
Growers' Association asked them to do as suffi- 
cient local labor could not be raised. The War 
Agricultural Committee made all the local ar- 
rangements. This was pioneer work of great 
value and importance as flax is essential in the 
making of aeroplane wings. 

The Corps sent a group of 100 women under 
competent gang leaders. The workers were 
housed in an empty country house and the War 
Office provided bedding. The Y. W. C. A. under- 
took the catering at the request of the Corps. 
The work, which was a great success, consisted in 



"The Women's Land Army" 157 

pulling, gating, wind mowing, stocking and tying 
flax. 

The Corps has already been asked to undertake 
this again next year. Owing to the Russian 
troubles and the closing of the Port of Riga, it 
will be necessary to put many more hundreds of 
acres under cultivation and it is probable four 
or five times as many women will be needed next 
year. 

Some of the Corps members are doing good 
work in Army Remount Depots, working in the 
stables and exercising the horses. One of the 
latest interesting developments of women's work 
is in the care of sick horses, carried out in the 
Horse Hospital in London. 

Within nine months of the outbreak of war, 
it was clear we must secure help for the farmers, 
in order to enable them to do their work. As the 
submarine menace developed, and the supply of 
grain in the world was affected by the numbers 
of men taken away from production, it was clear 
we must try to grow more food. 



158 Women and War Work 

Our grain production at the best was only 
twelve weeks of our supply, and even to keep 
up to that seemed to be a problem. 

It was clear that in agriculture, as in so many 
other things, women must fill up the ranks, and 
in the first official appeal of the Government for 
additional woman labor, the land had an im- 
portant place. 

Lord Selborne, President of the Board of Agri- 
culture, drew up a scheme for the organization 
of agriculture throughout the country. It con- 
sisted of War Agricultural Committee set up in 
each county who look after production, use of 
land, procuring use of motor machinery, etc., 
and of Women's Agricultural Committees. The 
latter undertake the organization of securing 
women workers for the land, choosing them, and 
arranging for training and placing out. 

The voluntary groups of women who have been 
working at the problem in the war are now prac- 
tically all merged in the Board of Agriculture's 
organization. The Women's Branch of the Food 
Production Department now controls and ar- 



"The Women's Land Army" 159 

ranged the whole work and Miss Meriel Talbot is 
the able chief. 

The Women's Land Corps, like the other or- 
ganizations, was prepared to be merged in the 
new Land Army of the Board and to cease to 
exist as a separate organization. Its members 
were willing to become part of the new Land 
Army. 

The Board found there was a distinct need 
for a voluntary association which would con- 
tinue to enroll women, who could not sign on for 
the duration of the war, and who were able to 
forego the benefits of free training, outfit and 
travelling given under the Government scheme. 
Over 100 members of the Corps did enroll and 
the original Corps members do not require to 
appear before the local Selection Committees nor 
to submit references, which marks the Board's 
confidence in the Corps. 

Many of the Corps Workers are now organiz- 
ing Secretaries for the Counties or Assistant 
Secretaries, or are travelling Inspectors under 
the Board of Agriculture. 



1G0 Women and War Work 

The Corps still organizes the supply of tem- 
porary workers for seasonal jobs such as potato 
dropping, hoeing, harvesting, fruitpicking, potato 
and root lifting, etc., done by groups under 
leaders. The work of organizing in the Counties 
is carried out by the appointment of a woman 
as District representative. She is responsible 
for a general supervision of the work in all the 
villages in her district. Each village has a 
woman to act as Registrar and her duty (with 
assistants, if necessary) is to canvass all the vil- 
lage women and girls for volunteers for whole 
and part time work, and for training, and to 
canvass the farmer to find out what labour he 
needs, and in the beginning they had to induce 
him to use women. She puts the farmer and the 
women suitable for his needs in her own district, 
in touch with each other, and passes to the Dis- 
trict Representative and to the Employment Ex- 
changes the names of all women qualified to help 
and not placed, and of those willing to train. 

All these committees, registrars and repre- 
sentatives are honorary workers. The Board of 



"The Women's Land Army" 161 

Agriculture appoints to each County for work 
with the committee a woman Organizing Secre- 
tary, and assistant also if necessary. 

The Board of Agriculture, working through 
the Employment Exchanges and under the direc- 
tion of their women heads, arranged a series of 
meetings and work of propaganda by posters and 
leaflets throughout the whole country early in 
1916. 

The Kepresentatives and Kegistrars organized 
the meetings to which the farmers and the women 
were invited, and the whole scheme was ex- 
plained. These were very frequently held in the 
market towns on market day and the farmer and 
his wife came in to hear after the sales. We had 
to assail the prejudices of some of our farmers 
pretty vigorously and of the women, too. We 
found the women who volunteered best for land 
work were in the class above the industrial 
worker, and that the comfortable and well edu- 
cated woman stood its work admirably. 

The farmers were stiff to move in some cases 
and especially disliked the idea of having to train 
11 



162 Women and War Work 

the women. "They weren't going to run after 
women all day — they had too much to do to go 
messing round with girls!" This objection was 
met by the Board of Agriculture arranging train- 
ing centres in every county. Some of the train- 
ing was done at the Women's Agricultural Col- 
leges and among places that arranged training 
very early were the Harper Adam's College in 
Shropshire (Swanley) ; Garford (Leeds) ; Spars- 
holt (Winchester) ; The Midland Agricultural 
Training College (Kingston), and Aberystwith. 

The Women's Agricultural Committee have 
arranged a great many training centres at big 
farms and on the Home farms of some of our 
estates. 

The girls volunteering for training must be 
eighteen years of age. They are interviewed as 
to suitability and references by the Selection 
Committee. They must have a medical certifi- 
cate filled in by their own doctor or by one of the 
committee's doctors. 

On being passed, they go to the training centre, 
the travelling expenses being paid by the Board. 




Back to the Land 
Women Tackle a Strong Man's Problem 



"The Women's Land Army" 163 

Outfit is free and the uniform is a very sensible 
one of breeches, tunic, boots and gaiters or put- 
tees, and soft hat, breeches, etc., cut to measure 
for each girl. Training and maintenance are free 
and there is always an instructor on the farm in 
addition to the farmer and his workers. The 
travelling to the post found, is again paid by the 
Government, and if work is not found at once, 
on completion of training, maintenance is paid 
till it is. 

The training is generally of four to six weeks' 
duration and in some cases longer, and over 7,000 
Women have been trained in this way and placed. 

Appeals for land recruits were made in Feb- 
ruary, 1916, and in January and April, 1917, 
when the Women's National Service Department 
asked for 100,000 women. 

The Land Army women after three months' 
service receive an official armlet — a green band 
with lion rampant in red and a certificate of 
honour. The Land women are the only women 
who receive an armlet — the munition girl wears 
a triangular brass brooch with "On war service." 



164 Women and War Work 

To induce the conservative farmer to try the 
women, exhibitions of farm work were arranged 
in different part of the country with great suc- 
cess, and the girls showed they could plough, and 
weed and hoe and milk and care for stock, and 
do all the farm work, except the heaviest, ex- 
tremely well. 

The War Office in its official memorandum of 
1916 gives a long list of the farm and garden 
work in which women are successfully employed, 
and they have been particularly successful in the 
care of stock. 

The farmer who used to declare he would never 
have a woman and that they were no use, and 
who has them now, is always quite pleased and 
generally cherishes a profound conviction that 
the reason why his women are all right is because 
he has the most exceptional ones in the country. 

Housing the worker and especially the groups 
for seasonal work has been a problem, but it has 
been done and the feeding of groups well has 
been managed, too. 

The housing conditions for the girl going to 



"The Women's Land Army" 165 

work whole-time are investigated by the Board 
organizer, and the representatives of committee. 
Very frequently a small group of girls have a 
cottage on the farm. 

The Inspectors of the Board are in charge of 
three counties each and look after all conditions. 

The girls are now being trained to drive the 
motor tractors for ploughing, and for women 
who understand horses there is at present a 
greater demand than supply. 

The Women's Branch of the Board is also at 
this time appealing for well-educated women to 
aid in Timber Supply for two pieces of work — 
measuring trees when felled, calculating the 
amount of wood in the log, and marking off for 
sawing, and as forewomen to superintend cross- 
cutting, felling small timber and coppice and 
to do the lighter work of forestry. 

Girls and women are in market gardens and 
on private gardens in very large numbers. The 
King has a great many women in his gardens 
and conservatories. Most estates are growing 
as many vegetables as possible to supply the 



166 Women and War Work 

many hospitals and the Fleet, and girls are help- 
ing very much in this. A great deal has been 
done by work in allotments, plots of land taken 
up by town dwellers and cultivated. In one part 
of South Wales alone 40,000 allotments have 
been worked and the allotment holders are or- 
ganizing themselves co-operatively for the pur- 
chase of seed, etc. We have Governmental 
powers now not only to enable Local Authorities 
to secure unused land for allotments, but to 
compel farmers to cultivate all their ground. 
We have fixed a price for wheat for five years, 
and a minimum wage for the agricultural man 
and woman. 

The girls on the land improve in health and 
increase in weight. The work is not only of 
supreme usefulness to the country — we have the 
submarine ceaselessly gnawing at our shipping 
and making our burden heavier — so we must 
produce everything possible. It has improved 
the physique of our girls — they like it, and many 
will permanently adopt it. Our Board of Agri- 
culture is also encouraging, for the benefit of 



"The Women's Land Army" 167 

the country woman, the formation of Women's 
Institutes, like those in Canada and America. 

In the Lord Mayor's Procession in London, on 
November 9, 1917, with the men-in-arms of all 
our great Commonwealth of Nations, with the 
Turks and the captured German aeroplanes and 
guns, the munition girls and the Land girls 
marched. No group in all that great array had 
a warmer welcome from our vast crowds than 
our sensibly clothed, healthy, happy and su- 
premely useful Land girls. 



WAR SAVINGS— THE MONEY 
BEHIND THE GUNS 

"You cannot have absolute equality of sacrifice 
in a war. That is impossible. But you can have 
equal readiness to sacrifice from all. There are 
hundreds of thousands who have given their 
lives, there are millions who have given up com- 
fortable homes and exchanged them for a daily 
communion with death. Multitudes have given 
up those whom they loved best. Let the nation as 
a whole place its comforts, its luxuries, its indul- 
gences, its elegances, on a national altar, conse- 
crated by such sacrifices as these men have 
made." — The Prime Minister. 

"Deep down in the heart of every one of us 
there is the spirit of love for our native land, 
dulled it may be in some cases, perhaps tempo- 
rarily obscured, by hardship, injustice and suf- 
fering, but it is there and it remains for us to 
touch the chord which will bring it to life; once 
aroused it will prove irresistable." 

—Sir R. M. Kindersley, K.B.E. 



CHAPTER IX 

WAR SAVINGS— THE MONEY 
BEHIND THE GUNS 

TO win the war, we must save. There is no 
task more imperative, no need more urgent, 
and there is no greater work than the work 
of educating the peoples of our countries, and 
inducing them to save and lend to their Govern- 
ments. 

The first Government Committee set up in 
Britain to do propaganda work for war loans 
was established shortly after the war under 
the title of the "Parliamentary War Savings 
Committee." It did some propaganda for the 
early war loans. At the same time a very inter- 
esting group of people associated with the 
"Round Table," and including in it many of our 
most able financiers and economists — such men 
as the future chairman of the National War 
Savings Committee, Sir Robert M. Kindersley, 
K.B.E.; C. J. Stewart, the Public Trustee; Hart- 



172 Women and War W t ork 

ley Withers, Lord Sumner, T. L. Gilmour, Theo- 
dore Chambers (now Controller of the National 
War Savings Committee), Evan Hughes (now 
Organizer-in-Chief), Lieut. J. H. Curie, Coun- 
tess Ferrers, Basil Blackett, C.B. ; William 
Schooling and Mrs. Minty, Hon. Sec. Excellent 
articles were written, leaflets published and meet- 
ings held at which many of us spoke throughout 
the country, and valuable work was done towards 
educating groups of useful people in the country. 
In 1915 a committee was appointed by the 
House of Commons to go into the whole question 
of Loans and Methods. The committee was pre- 
sided over by Mr. E. S. Montagu, and its findings 
were of great interest. It advised the immediate 
setting up of a committee whose task it would be 
to create machinery by which the small investor 
might be assisted to invest in State Securities, 
and secondly, to educate the country as a whole 
on the imperative need of economy. The Lords 
Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury set 
up the National War Savings Committee in 
March, 1916, and in April, 1917, it became a Gov- 



War Savings 173 

eminent Department. The first chairman was 
George Barnes, Esq., M.P., but very soon the 
chairmanship was taken by Sir Robert Kinders- 
ley, a director of the Bank of England, who has 
spent himself unceasingly in his great task. 

The committee started its work with a very 
small staff, Mr. Schooling being one of the orig- 
inal half-dozen in it, and the schemes and meth- 
ods of work were evolved. If works in its or- 
ganization by setting up committees. The 
County is the biggest unit and the Hon. Secre- 
tary of the County works at setting up Local 
Committees, which are established in towns with 
under 20,000 of a population, and we put a 
group of parishes together in rural districts 
under one Local Committee. All towns, cities 
and boroughs over 20,000 population are set up 
by Headquarters and have Local Central Com- 
mittees. There are now in England and Wales 
over 1,580 of these committees. Scotland is 
worked by a separate committee. Linked up to 
these committees and represented on them, the 
War Savings Associations work, and there are 



6 Reasons 

III III StaM Sin 



1. Because when you save you help our soldiers 

and sailors. 

2. Because when you spend on things you do 

not need you help the Germans. 

3. Because when you spend you make other 

people work for you, and the work of every 
one is wanted now to help our fighting 
men to win the war, or to produce neces- 
saries and to make goods for export. 

4. Because by confining your spending to neces- 

saries you relieve the strain on our ships 
and docks and railways and make transport 
cheaper and quicker. 

5. Because when you spend you make things 

dearer for everyone, especially for those 
who are poorer than yourself. 

6. Because every shilling saved helps twice, first 

when you don't spend it and again when 
you lend it to the Nation. 



Poster issued by National War Savings Committee 



War Savings 175 

now altogether over 40,000 of these with a 
weekly subscribing membership of over 7,000,- 
000 people. 

The committees also did the propaganda work 
for the January-February Loan of 1917, when 
five billion dollars was raised (£1,000,000,000) 
and over eight million people (out of our popula- 
tion of forty-five millions) subscribed to the 
loan. 

The work of the committees was admirable at 
that time and assisted materially in the success 
of the loan. 

The National War Savings Committee was 
also asked by Lord Devonport in April to assist 
the Ministry of Food by doing, through its com- 
mittees, a great food-saving propaganda. This 
request was made, because, it was explained, the 
War Savings Committees are the best organized 
and most thoroughly democratic Government 
organization in the country. This propaganda 
was also done with marked success. In autumn 
of this year the committees have done an ex- 
tensive campaign of education, and of work to 



176 Women and War W t ork 

strengthen and enlarge their associations, and 
also to push the sale of the new War Bonds. 

The Treasury's policy now is to raise all the 
money needed by the wisest borrowing from the 
people — day by day borrowing. 

The entire work of the committees and asso- 
ciations is done voluntarily — nothing is paid in 
the whole country for the work, and the only 
charge is Headquarters Staff and propaganda 
expenses. The County Secretaries are in most 
cases Board of Education Inspectors whom the 
Board has generously allowed to help. 

The War Saving Association is the body that 
sells the War Savings Certificates, which are 
very much like the American ones. These are 
also sold at all Post Offices and Banks. They 
cost 15/6 each, and in five years from date of 
purchase are worth £1. The interest in the fifth 
year is at the rate of £5.4.7 per cent. The inter- 
est begins at the end of the first year and the 
certificates can be cashed at any time at the Post 
Oflice with interest to the date of cashing. The 
War Savings Certificate has the additional ad- 



War Savings 177 

vantage that its interest is free of income tax, 
and in a country where income tax begins above 
£120 ($600), and is then at rate of 2/3 in £1 
(over 10 per cent) on earned income and 3/. on 
unearned, its advantage is very clear. The in- 
terest does not need to be included in income 
returns — but no one may buy more than 500 
certificates. It is a specially good paying secur- 
ity intended only for the small saver. 

The War Savings Associations can be set up 
by any group of people, ten or upwards, who 
wish to save co-operatively. They must estab- 
lish a committee, small or large. They must 
appoint a Secretary and Treasurer and then 
apply for recognition to their Local Committee, 
or if there is not one, to the National Committee. 
They are given an affiliation certificate by their 
committee and receive free all the books, papers, 
etc., necessary for carrying on an association. 
These are all supplied by the National Committee 
to Local Committees. 

The 40,000 Associations are in the Army, 
Navy, Munition Works, Government establish- 
12 



178 Women and War Work 

ments, Kailways, Banks, Mines, Churches, Shops, 
social groups, clubs, men's and women's organi- 
zations and 10,000 are in the schools. The 
schools, where we receive subscriptions down to 
2 cents have done wonderful work and the 
teachers have done a great deal to make our 
movement what it is. We find the children do 
the best propaganda in the homes. One teacher, 
after explaining to his children what it all meant 
in the morning, in the afternoon had dozens of 
subscriptions, and among them a sovereign which 
had been clasped tightly in a hot little hand for 
a mile and a half's walk. The little boy said, 
"I told Mother about it and she gave me that 
for fighting the Germans." 

Our Associations have unearthed piles of gold, 
one village association alone getting in £750 in 
gold ($3,750). Old stockings have come out and 
one agricultural laborer brought nine sovereigns 
to one of our Secretaries one night, and asked 
her to invest it to help the soldiers. She said, 
"Why did you bring it to me?" and he said, 
"Because its secreter than the Post Office." And 



War Savings 179 

the Association has the advantage that all its 
affairs are confidential, and though figures and 
amounts are known, no single detail need be. 

The schemes are two and apart from schools, 
the minimum weekly subscription is 12 cents. 
There is a Bank Book scheme and a Stamp 
scheme in which the member holds a card which 
takes thirty-one 12-cent stamps, and when filled 
up is handed in to the Secretary and a War 
Savings Certificate is received. 

The financial advantage to the members of 
forming an Association is quite easy to under- 
stand. Every week the takings are invested by 
the Secretary (using a special slip given by the 
National Committee) in War Savings Certifi- 
cates, so that when members finish subscribing 
for a certificate, instead of getting one dated the 
day they finished paying for it, as it would be 
if they saved by themselves, the Secretary has 
a store of earlier dated certificates on hand, and 
the member receives one of these. 

This works out quite fairly if one rule is ob- 
served — never give any one a Certificate dated 



180 Women and War Work 

earlier than the first Aveek they started paying 
for it. 

The people of England needed a great deal of 
education in war saving. We had to fight the 
strongly held conviction that of all sins the most 
despicable is "meanness," and that too much 
saving may seem mean. 

No Englishman will ever really admit he has 
any money, and he was inclined to question 
your right to talk about the possibility of his 
having some — and your right to tell him what 
to do with it, supposing he had any. Some of 
them were a little suspicious that it was the 
workers we were talking to most — it was not — 
and some of them were not quite sure they 
wanted their employers to know how much they 
saved. That is entirely obviated by the men 
running their own associations. Other people 
told you the people in their District never did, 
could, or would save and were spending their big 
wages in the most extravagant way — that pianos 
and fur coats appealed far more than war savings 
certificates. The official people in the towns 



War Savings 181 

when we approached them about conferences said 
much the same in some cases, but, yes, of course, 
you could come and have a conference and the 
Mayor would preside and you could try. And you 
did, and in six months they had dozens of associa- 
tions and thousands of members and had sold 
some thousands of certificates. We sell about 
one and a half million certificates a week and 
have sold about 140 millions since March, 1916. 
The appeal that won them was not only the prac- 
tical appeal of the value of the money after the 
war for themselves, to buy a house, to provide for 
old age, to educate the children. The strongest 
appeal was the patriotic one. Save your money 
to save your country. Throw your silver bullets 
at the enemy. We have not been content to say 
only "save," we have tried to educate our people 
on finance and economics. We have tried to 
show them that no country can go on in a strug- 
gle like this unless it conserves its resources — 
not even the richest countries. We have tried 
to appeal to the spirit behind all these things 



182 Women and War Work 

and our Chairman in one of his admirable 
speeches said: 

"It is upon these simple human feelings of 
loyalty, comradeship and patriotism that the 
great War Savings Movement is founded. Be- 
cause of the strength of this foundation I feel 
convinced that we shall succeed in the great 
national work we are setting out to perform. 
However difficult our task may prove, however 
serious the times ahead, this spirit will carry us 
safely and triumphantly through everything, and 
in the end we shall find ourselves not weakened 
but strengthened on account of these same diffi- 
culties which we shall most surely overcome." 

The problem before us is the problem of find- 
ing ten times the amount of money we did before 
the war for National purposes. We are spending 
over $30,000,000 a day. By our taxations, which 
includes an 80 per cent tax on excess profits, 
we are raising over 25 per cent of our total 
expenditure. We have met some other part of 
our expenditure in the three years of war by 
using our gold reserve very heavily; a great deal 



War Savings 183 

of it in payments in America, where you now 
possess more than a third of the gold of the 
entire world. We have also used a portion of 
our securities, our capital wealth and past sav- 
ings, and we have had to borrow heavily. Our 
National Debt is now £4,000,000,000 It was 
£700,000,000 at the outbreak of war. £1,000,- 
000,000 has been lent to our Allies and the 
Dominions. 

Numbers of people have an impression that 
Governments can find money. They can, to a 
certain extent, but only in a very limited way, 
without great harm. There is in this creation 
an addition to the buying power of the com- 
munity, but if everybody goes on spending no 
addition to the productive power, so it only 
creates high prices and hardship. The inflation 
of currency caused by it is a risk and an evil. 
The sound way is to get the money by taxation, 
from resources and in real voluntary loans. 

America's burden is very much the same as 
our own, and the need here also of voluntary 
saving and lending to the extent of more than 



184 Women and War Work 

half the expenditure is clear. America, like our- 
selves, is very wisely trying to democratise its 
war loans. Nothing is wiser or sounder or more 
calculated to make progress, and the changes 
after the war which will come, sound and steady 
than widely-spread, democratically-subscribed 
loans. These vast debts will have to be paid by 
the ability, productiveness and work of all, so it 
is in the highest degree desirable that the money 
and interest to be paid back should go out to 
every class of the community — and not only to 
small sections. It is well to remember, too, that 
the country that goes to the peace table finan- 
cially sound is in a position to make better 
terms. 

But the purely financial side of war savings 
is not the most important one. We talk in terms 
of money but the reality is not money but goods 
and services. The problem before our Govern- 
ments and the problem that cannot be left to 
our children (though the debts incurred in se- 
curing the credits may be) is the problem of 
finding every day over $30,000,000 worth of ma- 



FOR YOU] 




BUY WAR SAVI 

s,nd they wil 



One of the Posters Recently 



CHILDREN 







, 1 



CERTIFICATES 

to th&nk you 



Iational War Savings Committee 



War Savings 185 

terial and labour for the struggle. War savings 
among the people is not only essential to secure 
the money needed — it is far more essential from 
the point of view of securing the cutting down 
of the consumption of goods and labour by our 
peoples. 

Economists in peace time argue over what is 
termed "luxury" expenditure, the wasteful ex- 
penditure of peace. War expenditure may be 
correctly termed wasteful to a very great extent, 
and no country can carry both of these expendi- 
tures and remain solvent. Luxury expenditure 
should be entirely eliminated and the material 
and labour which was absorbed by it should go 
into the war. If this could be done completely, 
little damage would be done to the nation's eco- 
nomic position. The thing to be clearly realized 
is that all the productive effort of the nation is 
needed for three things — the carrying on of the 
war — the production of necessaries and the 
manufacture of goods for export. Every civilian 
who uses material and labour unnecessarily 
makes these tasks harden and goes into the mar- 



186 Women and War Work 

kets as an unfair competitor of the Government. 
Every man and woman who saves five dollars 
and lends it to their country give their country 
what is far more important than the five dollars. 
They transfer to the Government the five dollars 
worth of material and labour they could have 
used up if they had spent it on themselves and 
that is its real value. This means the needful 
purchases of the State are substituted for, in- 
stead of added to, the purchases of the civilian. 

Further, the influence of economy in prevent- 
ing undue inflation of currency and consequent 
high prices should be realized. A certain amount 
of high prices in war is inevitable but if civilians 
buy extravagantly, competition becomes intense 
and prices rise beyond all need. The supplies 
are limited — in our case that is greatly added to 
by the submarine menace — and the demands of 
the Government are enormous. The competition 
between the Government and the people grows 
more and more intense. Prices go still higher. 
The Government pays more than it should and 
so do the people. Higher wages are demanded 



War Savings 187 

with consequent higher prices, and so you get 
a vicious circle that gets more and more dan- 
gerous. If the civilian will relieve this pressure 
by demanding less, and cutting down his ex- 
penditure, prices will become more reasonable 
and the cost of the war less. 

The chief difficulty in time of war is to make 
people realize the need of economy when they 
have, as our people have, more money than ever 
before, when enormous sums of money pour out 
ceaselessly to the people from the Government. 
They have to realize the fundamental difference 
between peace prosperity and war prosperity. 
Peace prosperity comes from the creation of 
wealth. War prosperity comes from the dissi- 
pation of wealth — the use of all resources — the 
pledging of credits. It is just as if we, as indi- 
viduals, to meet a personal crisis, took all our 
personal savings and borrowed all we could and 
proceeded to spend it. The wise man or woman 
will save all of it they can and realize that every 
unnecessary dollar spent helps the enemy. No 
civilian in a struggle of this kind has any moral 



188 Women and War Work 

right to more than necessary things. We want 
every man and woman to have all they need for 
their efficiency. We would not say for one mo- 
ment that every one can save, and money spent 
on clothing and feeding the children and keeping 
the home comfortable is well spent, but nothing 
should be wasted. 

The standard in this matter should be set by 
the rich, on whom rests the greatest responsibil- 
ity, moral and social. It is impossible to expect 
workers to save if they see luxury and extrava- 
gance everywhere round them. One cannot too 
strongly say that. 

The civilians who work hard to produce, who 
have done heavy toil in munitions and industry, 
and receive good wages and then go out and 
spend it lavishly might just as well have slacked 
at their work. The ultimate effect is the same. 
They have undone the good they did. It is as if 
soldiers having won a trench let the Germans 
come back into it. 

People of small means often feel that all they 
can save is so small that it cannot really help 



War Savings 189 

and wonder if the effort to save is worth while, 
but if every person in America saved 2 cents a 
day, it would amount to f 730,000,000 in a year, 
and that would find a great deal of munitions. 

Finding the money by saving finds everything, 
releases men for the army, finds labour and 
money for munitions, finds labour for ships and 
relieves the demands on tonnage, finds supplies. 
It is the fundamental service of the civilian, and 
no good citizen wants luxuries while soldiers 
and sailors need clothes and guns and ships and 
munitions. 

Everybody, man, woman, and child, can join 
the great financial army and march behind our 
men, and women have done with us and can do 
everywhere a great work in this. Women are 
on our National Committee and doing a great 
deal of its organization. Our men in the 
trenches, in the air, at sea, endure for us what 
we would have said before the war was humanly 
unendurable. They pay for our freedom with a 
great price — and we send them out to pay it — 
in death, disablement, suffering and sacrifice. 



190 Women and War Work 

To fail in our duty behind them would be the 
great betrayal. 

Our treasures are very small things compared 
with our men Shall we give them and not our 
money? 




Before You Spend. 

Before you spend 
money on goods or 
labourtbat is not really 
necessary, remember 

—that every penny 
thus spent is divert- 
ing somebody's 
work from the 
channels of 
National necessity. 

—that only a limited 
supply of labour 
and material is 
available, and that 
the Country's need 
of these is vital and 
urgent. 

— that your own per- 
sonal welfare is 
bound up with the 
welfare of your 
Country, and that 
by saving and 
economising now, 
you ensure both. 

There are many ways of 
saving : the best way «s 
to invest your money in 
War Savings Certificates. 
The interest is generous 
— the security sound— the 
method simplicity itself. 

See how much you 
can save if you really set 
your mind to it. 



THE NATIONAL WAR 
SAVINGS COMMITTEE, 

Salisbury Sq , London, E.C. 4 



Reverse of Before You Spend 

A Bookmark, Issued by N. W. S. C. 



How I5'6 




TRANSFER your pur- 
chasing power to the 
State, and make your 
money earn more money by 
investing it now in War Savings 
Certificates. 

A Certificate bought for 15/6 
increases in value each year until at 
the end of five years it can be cashed 
for a sovereign. The chart given 
below shows the progressive value of 
a Certificate after each completed year. 

You can purchase a Certificate 
in small weekly sums, if you wish, 
by joining a War Savings Associa- 
tion. Any Post Office, Bank or 
Local War Savings Committee will 
give you particulars. 

Start to-day. 



1st 

Tfear 



15'9 



2»d 

Year 



16'9 






4& 



1$ 



5Ql 

2£ar 



1 



Issued by 

The NATIONAL WA R SAVINGS 

COMMITTEE, 

Salisbury Square. London, 

fc.C. 4. 



Think Before 
You Spend. 

Before you buy any article 
or service ask yourself "Is 
this really necessary?" 

If you cannot, without 
doubt, or hesitation, 
answer "Yes"— save the 
money and invest it in 

WAR SAVINGS 
CERTIFICATES 

Because 

every penny you spend on 
unnecessary things means a 
loss to theCountryof materials 
and labour urgently needed 
for National purposes. 

Because 

the money you save now will 
be more useful to you later on 
and, if it is invested in War 
Savings Certificates, it will be 
earning more money for you 
all the while it remains in- 
vested. 

You can obtain War 
Savings Certificates 
through any Post Office 
or Bank, or you can 
join a War Savings 
Association. 

BE A WAR SAVER 



THE NATIONAL WAR 
SAVINGS COMMITTEE, 

Salisbury Sq., London, E.G. 4 



Think Before You Spend Reverse of How 15/6 

Another Bookmark 



FOOD PRODUCTION AND CON- 
SERVATION 

"The whole country ought to realise that we 
are a beleaguered city." 
— The President of the Board of Agriculture. 

"If you have any belief in the cause for which 
thousands of your fellow-countrymen have laid 
down their lives, you will scrape and scrape and 
scrape, you will so in old clothes, and old boots, 
and old ties until such a mass of treasure be gar- 
nered into the coffers of the Government as to 
secure at the end of all this tangle of misery a 
real and lasting settlement for Europe." 

— The President of the Board of Education. 



13 



CHAPTER X 

FOOD PRODUCTION AND CON- 
SERVATION 

IN this great struggle the food question as- 
sumes greater and greater importance. 
The production of food has been affected 
by the raising of great armies — more than twenty 
million men are in arms in Europe — by the feed- 
ing of armies, for which we must, of necessity, 
provide food in excess of what these men would 
need in civil life. The ability to get the food has 
been made difficult for us by the submarine war- 
fare. Thousands of tons of wheat lie in Aus- 
tralia, but we cannot afford ships to bring it. 
Tea has been very short in England, though 
again there are thousands of tons waiting in 
India. The most urgent need of the Allies is for 
ships and more ships. There has been great loss 
of tonnage and the needs of the Army and Navy 
absorb the service of vast numbers of the avail- 
able ships. We have moved 13,000,000 men since 



196 Women and War Work 

war broke out, and the supplies and munitions 
they have needed, to our many fronts. Cease- 
lessly we move the wounded. We have to bring 
into Britain half our food. That we have done 
this, has been due to the British Navy and the 
Reserves — the patrols and the mine sweepers — 
the Fringes of the Fleet — and not least, the mer- 
chant seaman. About 6,000 merchantmen have 
been killed by the enemy, some with diabolical 
cruelty. These men are torpedoed and come into 
port, and go for another ship at once. On the 
ship on which I crossed there were seamen who 
had been torpedoed three times In its submarine 
warfare the enemy has broken every interna- 
tional and human law — has used "frightfulness" 
to its fullest extent, and the answer of our mer- 
chant seamen is to go to sea again as soon as the 
ship is ready, and the older men, who had retired, 
return to sea. The seaman of our country know 
the enemy. It was our Seamen's Union that 
refused to carry the Peace Delegates to Stock- 
holm, and it is they and our fishermen who, in 
the Reserves, man the patrols and mine sweepers, 



Food Production and Conservation 197 

and who, on our little drifters and trawlers, have 
fought the enemy's big destroyers — fought till 
they went down, refusing to surrender. 

It is not strange that the best-liked poster in 
our Food Crusade, and the one people want 
everywhere, is a simple drawing of a merchant 
seaman, and under it the words, "We risk our 
lives to bring you food. It is up to you not to 
waste it." 

The countries that can succeed best in solving; 
the food question are the countries that will win, 
and the food problem will not cease, any more 
than many others, when peace is declared. 

Very early in the war, existing organizations, 
such as the National Food Reform Association, 
and newly created ones, the National Food Econ- 
omy League and the Patriotic Food League of 
Scotland, did a great deal of active work on food 
saving. They aimed at instructing in the scien- 
tific principles of the economical use of food, and 
issued admirable leaflets and Handbooks for 
Housewives and Cookery Books. A series of Ex- 
hibitions, often described as "Patriotic House- 



198 Women and War Work 

keeping Exhibitions" were held in different parts 
of the country, organized generally by women's 
societies. One of the early ones I organized in 
Salisbury. Later, the Public Trustee was chair- 
man of an Official Committee, which organized 
large Exhibitions in London and throughout the 
country. These Exhibitions had stalls showing 
food values with specimens, had exhibits of the 
most economical cooking stoves and arrange- 
ments, and exhibited every manner of time and 
labour saving device. They had wonderful ex- 
hibits of clothes for children made from old 
clothes of grown-ups, of marvellous dresses and 
little jerseys and caps and scarfs made from legs 
of old stockings. There were charming dresses 
and underclothing made of the very simplest ma- 
terials and decorated artistically with stitching 
and embroidery. These were made by school 
girls of seven and upwards for themselves, and 
the Glasgow School of Art's work, done in 
schools there, was perfectly beautiful. The cost 
was shown and it was incredibly small. All sorts 
of things for the household in simple carpentry 



Food Production and Conservation 190 

and upholstery, using up boxes and wood, were 
shown, and old tins were converted into all sorts 
of useful household things. Facts as to waste 
were made as striking as possible by demonstra- 
tion. Every exhibition had a War Savings Stall 
and Certificates were often sold at these in large 
numbers, the Queen buying the first sold at the 
first London Exhibition. 

The great feature of the Exhibitions was Food 
Saving and Conservation. Demonstrations in 
cooking and in hay-box cooking, were given and 
these were attended by thousands of women, Miss 
Petty, "The Pudding Lady," being a specially 
attractive demonstrator. She was called "The 
Pudding Lady," first by little children in London 
in the East End, where she used to go into the 
homes, and show them how to cook on their own 
fires, and with their own meagre possessions. 
When she came there was pudding, so her title 
came as a result. 

We always included exhibits and posters on 
the care of the babies and the children. Lectures 



200 Women and War Work 

on vegetable and potato growing, bee and poultry 
keeping, etc., were also given. 

There were competitions in connection with 
the Exhibitions — prizes were offered for the best 
cake — for the best war bread — for the best din- 
ners for a family at a small cost — for the best 
weekly budgets of different small incomes — for 
the best blouse and dress made at a small cost, 
etc., and these were extremely popular. The 
prizes were generally War Savings Certificates 
or labour-saving devices. , 

From the Governmental point of view the 
Food work is in two great divisions : Food Pro- 
duction, which is worked by the Food Production 
Department of the Board of Agriculture, of 
which the Women's Branch is doing the work of 
placing women on the land. It not only works 
on the production of more food but it organizes 
the conservation of food, such as fruit bottling, 
and preserving fruit, and vegetable and fruit 
drying, etc. 

A very great deal has been done in demon- 
strating how to conserve fruit and vegetables all 



Food Production and Conservation 201 

over the country and this has been done to an 
extent hitherto quite unreached. Co-operative 
work has been done and most interesting experi- 
ments made. The glass bottles necessary have 
been secured by the Department, and are sold by 
them to those doino- the conservation at a fixed 
price. Last summer the Sugar Commission also 
arranged to sell sufficient sugar for making pre- 
serves to those people who grow their own fruit. 
This they succeeded in doing to a very large 
extent — which was a most valuable conservation. 

The Ministry of Food is the other great body 
dealing with all food problems of supply, price, 
regulations, and propaganda. 

Lord Rhondda is our Food Controller. Our 
first Controller was Lord Devonport. Food con- 
trol is the most unpopular work in any country 
and a Food Controller deserves the help, sym- 
pathy and support of every good citizen. No 
Food Controller, no matter how able, and no 
matter how great and comprehensive his powers 
are, can do his work without the co-operation of 
the people. 



202 Women and War Work 

Lord Rhondda's powers are very great as to 
control of supplies, prices and regulations. The 
price of the four pound loaf (and it must be four 
pounds) is fixed by our Government at 18 cents 
and the loss is borne by the Government. 

The prices of meat, beans, cheese, tea, sugar, 
milk, and the profits on other articles are reg- 
ulated by the Ministry. When Lord Devonport 
was Food Controller we had courses at lunch 
and dinner limited — a policy most people felt to 
be stupid as it meant a run on staple foods — 
and it was abandoned by Lord Rhondda. We had 
meatless days, which also have been stopped. 
We found it difficult to do, and impossible to 
regulate. We had many potatoless days last 
spring — by regulation in the restaurants — per- 
force by most of us in towns where they were 
almost impossible to get, but this year we have 
the biggest potato crop we have had. 

In restaurants and hotels now supplies are 
regulated. No one can have more than two 
ounces of bread at any meal, and the amount of 
flour and sugar supplied is strictly rationed to 



Food Production and Conservation 203 

the hotels, according to the number served. Not 
more than five ounces of meat (before cooking) 
can be served at any meal. These regulations are 
strictly enforced, and the duty of seeing all the 
regulations are carried out, and all the work 
done, devolves upon the Local Food Control Com- 
mittees which have been set up all over the 
country under the Ministry, by the local author- 
ities. On every such Committee there must be 
women. They fix prices for milk, etc., and ini- 
tiate prosecutions for infringements of the laws 
regulating food. 

No white flour is sold or used in Britain. The 
mills are all controlled by the Government and 
all flour is now war grade, which means it is 
made of about 70 per cent white flour and other 
grains, rye, corn (which we call maize), barley, 
rice-flour, etc., are added. We expect to mill 
potato flour this year. Oatmeal has a fixed price, 
9 cents a pound, in Scotland, 10 cents in Eng- 
land. No fancy pastries, no icing on cakes and 
no fancy bread may be made. Only two shapes 
of loaf are allowed — the tin loaf and the Cobum. 



204 Women and War Work 

Cakes must only have 15 per cent sugar and 30 
per cent war grade flour. Buns and scones and 
biscuits have regulations as to making, also. 

Butter is very scarce and margarine supplies 
not always big enough, and we have tea and sugar 
and margerine queues in our big towns — women 
standing in long rows waiting. It is an intoler- 
able waste of time — and yet it seems difficult to 
get it managed otherwise. 

The woman in the home in our country with 
high prices, want of supplies, and her desire to 
economise has had a busy and full time, but our 
people are quite well fed. Naturally enough, 
considering the hard work we are all doing, our 
people are really using more, not less food, but 
waste is being fought very well. 

Waste is a punishable offence and if you throw 
away bread or any good food, you will be pro- 
ceeded against, as many have been, and fined 
40/- to £100. No bread must be sold that is 
not twelve hours baked. New bread is extrava- 
gant in cutting and people eat more. It is in- 
teresting to note that in one period of the Na- 



Food Production and Conservation 205 

poleonic wars we did the same thing and ate no 
new bread. 

Food hoarding is an offence and the food is 
commandeered and the hoarder punished. Sev- 
eral people have been fined £50 and upwards. 

The work of the Army in economizing food has 
been a great work. Eations have been cut down 
and much more carefully dealt with. The use 
of waste products has become a science. All the 
fats are saved — even the fats in water used in 
washing dishes are trapped and saved. The fats 
are used to make glycerine, and last year the 
Army saved enough waste fat to make glycerine 
for 18,000,000 shells. Fats and scraps for pigs, 
and bones, etc., are all sold and one-third of the 
money goes back to the men's messing funds to 
buy additional foods and every camp tries to beat 
the other in its care and efficiency and the women 
cooks are doing admirably in this work. 

Officers of the Navy and Army are only per- 
mitted to spend a certain amount on meals in 
restaurants and hotels — 3/6 for lunch and 5/6 
for dinner and 1/6 for tea. 



206 Women and War Work 

The other side of the Food Campaign is the 
propaganda and educative work. Lord Rhondda 
has two women Co-Directors with him — Mrs. 
C. S. Peel and Mrs. M. Pember Reeves — in the 
Ministry of Food, and they help in the whole 
work and very specially with the educational and 
propaganda work, and with the work of com- 
munal feeding. 

A number of communal kitchens have been 
established with great success — many being in 
London. At these thousands of meals are pre- 
pared — soups and stews, fish, and meats, and 
puddings, every variety of dishes, and the pur- 
chasers come to the kitchens and bring plates 
and jugs to carry away the food. Soups are sold 
from 2 to 4 cents for a jugful, and other things 
in proportion. These are established under 
official recognition, the Municipalities in most 
cases providing the initial cost. The prices paid 
cover the cost of food and cooking, and the 
service is practically all voluntary. 

The first propaganda work was, as I have said, 
done by the War Savings Committees, and our 



Food Production and Conservation 207 

big task was to try to make our people realize 
how undesirable it is to have to resort to com- 
pulsory rationing. We are rationed on sugar 
and we do not want to adopt more compulsory 
rationing than is necessary. Compulsory ra- 
tioning, in some people's minds, seems to ensure 
supplies. It does not and where, under volun- 
tary rationing, people go round and find other 
food and get along with the supplies there are, 
under compulsory rationing there would always 
be a tendency to demand their ration and to 
make trouble about the lack of any one com- 
modity in it. 

Compulsory rationing to be workable must be 
a simple scheme, and no overhead ration of 
bread, for example, is just. The needs of workers 
vary and so do the needs of individuals, and 
bread is the staple food of our poorer classes. 
They have less variety of foods and need more 
bread than the better-off people. Compulsory 
rationing may have to come, but most of us are 
determined it will not come till it is really un- 
avoidable and we are appealing to our people 



208 Women and War Work 

to prevent that, and masses of them are econom- 
izing and saving in a manner worthy of the 
greatest praise. 

The rationing we appealed to our people to 
get down to, was three pounds of flour per head 
in the week, 2% lbs. of meat and % lb. sugar. 

The King's Pledge, which we had signed by 
those willing to do this, all over the country, 
pledged people to cut down their consumption 
of grain by one-quarter in the household, and 
the King's Proclamation urged this, and econ- 
omies in grain and horse feeding. 

An old Proclamation of the 18th century ap- 
pealed to our people to cut down their consump- 
tion of their grains by one-third and was almost 
identical in form, and copies signed by Edmund 
Burke and other famous people were shown in 
our Thrift Exhibitions in Buckinghamshire. 

We arranged meetings for the maids of house- 
holds in big groups to explain the need and 
meaning of economy in food with great success. 
Every head of a household knows that the maids 



Food Production and Conservation 209 

can make or mar one's efforts to save food, and 
we have found many of ours admirable, and will- 
ing to do wonders in the way of economy and 
saving. 

If compulsory rationing in more than sugar 
comes as it may, the basis of rationing will, we 
believe, be worked out with as much considera- 
tion as possible of the needs of the workers. 

Our Co-operative movement is, in a simple way 
rationing its buyers, by regulating supplies, and 
it is in voluntary work of that kind, which is go- 
ing on extensively, and in the people's own efforts 
and economies that our great hope lies. 

The Ministry of Food arranges meetings and 
sends speakers to associations and bodies of 
every kind. The schools are very extensively 
used for demonstrations to which the parents are 
invited. The children are talked to and write 
essays on food and general saving and in these, 
one litle girl of seven told us, "If you don't throw 
away your crusts, you will beat the Kaiser," and 
another small boy said, "Boys should give up 
14 



210 Women and War Work 

sliding for the war, as it wears out their boots," 
and another said, "We should not go to picture 
houses so much — once a week is quite often 
enough." One little child who had been coached 
at school returned home to see a baby sister of 
two throw away a big crust and said, "If Lord 
Rhondda was here, wouldn't he give you a row." 
So the root of the matter seems to be in the youth 
of our country and the sweetness and willingness 
of their sacrifices is very fragrant. They sing 
about saving bread and saving pennies, and to 
hear a choir of Welsh children sing these songs, 
with a vigour and enjoyment that is infectious, 
is quite delightful. 

Most of our big girls' schools have given up 
buying sweets, and when they get gifts of them 
send them to the prisoners and the soldiers. We 
have, of course, restricted our manufacture of 
sweets very much. 

Our school children have, in addition, worked 
enormous numbers of school gardens and grown 
tons of potatoes and vegetables. 

Our distilleries are taken over by the Govern- 



Food Production and Conservation 211 

ment for spirits for munitions and our beer is cut 
down very greatly. Travelling kitchens go out 
from the Ministry of Food also and do demon- 
strations in villages and country districts on 
cooking and conservation. The Ministry issues 
leaflets of recipes and instructions in cooking 
and has a special Win the War Cookery Book. 
Articles are also published on food values and 
quite a number of people begin to understand 
something about calories, even though they are 
rather vague about what it all means. 

Naturally most of the Food speaking and work 
is done by women though food control and saving 
is men's and women's work. 

This year we saved grain by collecting the 
horse chestnuts, a. work that was done by the 
school children. These are crushed and the oil 
used for munitions and it was reckoned we could 
save tens of thousands of tons of grain by doing 
this. 

A wonderful work in the use of waste ma- 
terials has been the work of the Glove Waistcoat 
Society, to which American women have kindly 



212 Women and War Woek 

sent old gloves. Old gloves are cleaned, the 
fingers are cut off, the other big pieces stitched 
together and cut into waistcoats and backed by 
linenette. These are sold to the soldiers and 
sailors for wear under their tunics and are most 
beautifully light and windproof. The fingers of 
kid gloves are made into glue, of wash leather 
gloves into rubbers for household use. The big 
pieces of linenette over are made into dust sheets 
and the small scraps go to stuff mattresses for 
a Babies' Home. The buttons are carded and 
sold and the making up provides work for dis- 
tressed elderly women. It needs no funds — it is 
self-supporting — it only needs old gloves. 

In preventing waste and in food production 
and conservation, our people have learned much, 
and a very great deal of admirable work is being 
done. 



THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY 
CORPS 

"Now every signaller was a fine Waac, 
And a very fine Waac was she — e." 

"Soldier and Sailor, too." 



CHAPTER XI 

THE WOMEN'S ARMY AUXILIARY 
CORPS 

THE Waacs is the name we all know them 
by and shall, it seems, continue to. It will 
have to go into future dictionaries beside 
Anzac. 

The deeds of the Anzacs in Gallipoli and 
France are immortalised in many records — 
magnificently in John Masefield's "Gallipoli" — 
an epic in its simplicity. The work of the Waacs 
is the work of support and substitution and its 
records only begin to be made. 

The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is an 
official creation of this year. At the Women's 
Service Demonstration in the Albert Hall in 
January, 1917, Lord Derby asked for Women 
for clerical service in the army and official ap- 
peals were issued in February and repeatedly 
since that time, and now all over the country we 
have Recruiting Committees organizing meetings 



216 Women and War Work 

and securing recruits. They are recruiting at 
the rate of 10,000 a month. 

The Waacs had many forerunners in some of 
our voluntary organizations, in the Women's Re- 
serve Ambulance, of "The Green Cross Society," 
attached to the National Motor Volunteers — the 
Women's Volunteer Reserve — the Women's Le- 
gion — the Women's Auxiliary Force and the 
Women Signallers Territorial Corps. The 
Women's Signallers Corps had as Commandant- 
in-Chief Mrs. E. J. Parker — Lord Kitchener's 
sister. They believed women should be trained 
in every branch of signalling and that men could 
be released for the firing line by women taking 
over signalling work at fixed stations. Their 
prediction came true more than two years later, 
for today they are in France. They drilled and 
trained the women in all the branches of signal- 
ling semaphore — flags, mechanical arms; and in 
Morse — flags, airline and cable, sounder (teleg- 
raphy), buzzer, wireless, whistle, lamp and helio- 
graph. They also learned map reading — the 
most fascinating of accomplishments. This 



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Women of the Reserve Ambulance 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 217 

Corps had the distinction of introducing "wire- 
less" for women in England in connection with 
its Headquarters training school. When one of 
the Corps later accepted a splendid appointment 
as wireless instructor at a wireless telegraph 
college — the Corps was duly elated. 

The Women's Reserve Ambulance had the dis- 
tinction of being the first ambulance on the scene 
in the first serious Zeppelin Raid in London 
(September, 1915). They came to where the 
first bombs fell, killing and wounding, and did 
the work of rescue, and when another ambulance 
arrived later, "Thanks," said the police, "the 
ladies have done this job." 

They worked assisting the War Hospital 
Supply Depots, that wonderful organization run 
by Miss MacCaul, they provided orderlies to 
serve the meals and act as housemaids, and make 
the men welcome at Peel House, one of the Ca- 
nadian Clubs. Others helped in Hospitals, wash- 
ing up and doing other work. 

Others met and moved wounded — others at 
night took the soldiers to the Y. M. C. A. huts. 



218 Women and War Work 

The Women's Volunteer Reserve, too, seemed to 
be everywhere doing all sorts of useful, helpful 
things — disciplined, ready, and trained. The 
Women's Legion led the way in providing cooks 
and waitresses for camps and sent out 1,200 of 
these inside a year. The first convalescent camp 
to have all its cooking and serving done by 
women was managed — admirably, too — by the 
Women's Legion, so the W T aacs had many volun- 
tary forerunners, who are mostly in it and 
amalgamated with it now. 

The Waacs are a part of the Army organiza- 
tion — are in His Majesty's Forces and when a 
girl joins she is subject to army rules and reg- 
ulations. They are working now in large num- 
bers in England and in France, at all the base 
towns, and in quiet places, where things that 
matter are planned and initiated. 

The girl who goes to France knows she is going 
to possible danger by being handed, before she 
goes, her two identification discs. 

For France, no woman under twenty or over 
forty is eligible. After volunteering, they are 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 219 

chosen by Selection Boards and medically ex- 
amined. They receive a grant for their uni- 
forms. The workers wear a khaki coat-frock — 
a very sensible garment — brown shoes and soft 
hat and a great coat. At the end of a year they 
get a £5 ($25) bonus on renewing their contracts, 
and they get a fortnight's leave in a year. 

Their payment is not high — it works out about 
the same as a soldier's when everything is paid — 
and that, with us, is just over 25 cents a day, so / 
the khaki girl, like the soldier, does not work for 
the money. 

The whole organization is officered and di- 
rected by women. Mrs. Chalmers Watson, M.D., 
C. B. E., is the Chief Controller, with Miss Mac- 
Queen as Assistant Chief Controller. Under 
them are the Controllers — Area, Recruiting, etc., 
and the officer in charge of a unit is called an 
Administrator, and under her are deputy ad- 
ministrators and assistant-administrators. They 
are not given Military titles and do not hold com- 
missions, but their appointments are gazetted in 
the ordinary way. There is always a strong feel- 



220 Women and War Work 

ing in England that Military and Naval titles 
should be strictly reserved. 

The equivalent of a sergeant is a "forewoman," 
and there are quartermistresses in charge of 
stores. Eank is shown as among the men, by 
badges, rose and fleur-de-lys. 

Administrators are being trained in large 
numbers. They have a short course of drilling, 
learn to fill up Army forms, make out pay sheets, 
how to requisition for rations, catering generally, 
and how to run a hostel. They also attend prac- 
tical lectures on hygiene and sanitation. When 
this is done, they go to camp for a fortnight's 
training under an administrator in actual charge 
of a Unit. If they have not done well in this 
course, they are not appointed. 

An administrator receives a flOO grant for 
her uniform and is paid from f 600 to $875 a year 
out of which $200 is deducted for food. There 
is generally one officer to every fifty women. 

The administrator must drill her girls. The 
W. A. A. C. is proud of its tone and its discipline. 
Its officers make the girls feel much is expected 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 221 

of them, because of the uniform they wear, and 
the girls have made a fine response. There are 
very few rules and as little restraint as possible. 
The girls are put on their honour when not under 
supervision. The administrator has considerable 
disciplinary powers, but they are very little 
needed. 

It does not seem to be by discipline that the 
officer succeeds best. There is a nice story told 
of an Administrator who had been away from her 
unit some days, returning and being met at the 
station by one of the rank and file who had come 
for her bag. 

"I am glad to see you, Ma'am," was the greet- 
ing, so emphatic a one that the Administrator 
inquired nervously if something were wrong. 

"Oh, no. Seems as if Mother had been away, 
Ma'am," explained the girl. 

The Administrator can help her girls by sort- 
ing them out well, putting friends and the same 
kind of girls together; it makes so much 
difference. 

The Administrator has not only to handle her 



222 Women and War Work 

own sex — she has to deal with men officers and 
quartermasters, and she succeeds in doing that 
well, too. 

Our Administrators are naturally women of 
education and carefully chosen and there is 
plenty of opportunity of rising "from the ranks." 

The girls cross over to France on the gray 
transports, are received by the women Draft Re- 
ceiving Officers, and go up the lines to their 
assigned posts. 

The women are billeted in some of the base 
towns in pensions and summer hotels that have 
been commandeered, in big houses and in one 
case in a beautiful old Chateau where the ghosts 
of dead-and-gone ladies of beauty and fashion 
must wonder what kind of women these khaki 
clad girls are. The girls in these make their 
rooms home-like with photographs, hangings, and 
little personal belongings. 

The greater number of girls live in camps, and 
different types of huts have been tried. Some 
of the camps are entirely of wooden huts — large 
and roomy. Other camps have the Nissen hut 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 223 

of corrugated iron, lined with laths wood floored 
and raised from the ground. These have been 
linked together in the cleverest way by covered 
ways. In the sleeping huts the beds are iron 
bedsteads with springs and horse-hair matresses. 
Each bed has four thoroughly good blankets and 
a pillow. No sheets are given — there is no labour 
to wash the thousands of sheets, and the cotton 
is needed. Each woman has a wooden locker 
with a shelf above, and a chair. Washing and 
bathing is done in separate huts, and in every 
camp hot and cold water is laid on. 

The mess room is a big hut. The girls wait 
on themselves and the food is excellent. They 
receive in rations the same as the soldiers on 
lines of communication — four-fifths of a fighting 
man's ration and whatever is over is returned 
and credited, and the extra money is used for 
luxuries, games and for entertaining visitors 
from other camps. 

Here is a typical week's meals and it shows 
how well they are fed : 






S 



224 Women and War Work 

Monday. — Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, baked 
mince, jam. Dinner: Cold beef, potatoes, 
tomatoes, baked apples, custard. Tea: Tea, 
bread, butter, jam. Supper: Welsh rarebit, 
bread, butter, jam. 

Tuesday. — Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, boiled 
ham, marmalade. Dinner : brown onion stew, 
potatoes, baked beans, biscuit pudding. Tea: 
Tea, bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper: 
Savoury rice, tea, bread. 

Wednesday. — Breakfast : Tea, bread, butter, veal 
loaf. Dinner: Eoast mutton, potatoes, mar- 
row, bread pudding. Tea : Tea, bread, butter, 
marmalade, jam. Supper: Eissoles, bread, 
butter, cheese. 

Tuesday. — Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried 
bacon. Dinner: Meat pie, potatoes, cabbage, 
custard and rice. Tea: Tea, bread, butter, 
jam. Supper : Soup, bread and jam. 

Friday. — Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, rissoles, 
marmalade. Dinner: Boiled beef, potatoes 
and onions, Dundee roll. Tea: tea, bread, 
butter, jam, slab cake. Supper: Shepherd's 
pie, tea, bread, butter. 

Saturday. — Breakfast : Tea, bread, butter, boiled 
ham, jam. Dinner : Thick brown stew, pota- 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 225 

toes and cabbage, bread pudding. Tea: Tea, 
bread, butter, jam, cheese. Supper : Tead-in- 
hole, bread jam. 

Sunday.— Breakfast: Tea, bread, butter, fried 
bacon. Dinner : Koast beef, potatoes and cab- 
bage, stewed fruit, custard. Tea : Tea, bread, 
butter, jam. Supper: Sonp, bread, butter, 
cheese. 

They are divided into five big classes for work. 
There are large numbers of them cooks and 
waitresses, and many of these cooks come from 
the best private houses in England, so the Waacs 
and the soldiers fare well. In one camp in the 
early days sixty women cooks walked in and 
sixty men out, released for the fighting lines. 
The saving in fats done by the women is very 
great and their economies admirable and the 
women are waitresses in the camps and messes. 

In one base in France when twenty-nine cooks 
came to take charge in the early days the com- 
manding officer issued an order that expresses 
very well the spirit in which the women are 
regarded. 

15 



226 Women and War Work 

Base Depot. 

The Officer Commanding Base Depot wishes 
to draw the attention of all ranks to the follow- 
ing points in connection with the Domestic Sec- 
tion of the Women's Auxiliary Army, which is 
employed in this depot: 

These women have not come out for the sake 
of money, as their pay is that of a private soldier. 
In nearly every case they have lost someone dear 
to them in this war, and they are out here to 
try to do their best to make things more com- 
fortable for the men in regard to their food. 

It, therefore, is up to all ranks to make their 
lot an easy and not a hard one during their 
stay in France. If any man should so forget 
himself as to use bad language or at any time 
to be rude to them, it is up to any of his com- 
rades standing by to shut him up, and see that 
he does not repeat this offence. 

To the older men I would say: Treat them 
as you would your own daughters. To the 
younger men : Treat them as you would your own 
sisters. 

, Comdg., Base Depot. 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 227 

They are doing the clerical work more and 
more, and in a few weeks have become so tech- 
nical that they know where to send requisitions 
concerning 9.2 guns or trench mortars or giant 
howitzers. There is a favourite story told 
against an early Waac that when a demand came 
for armoured hose, she sent it to the clothing 
department, but she knows better now. 

French girls are also helping in the clerical 
department, working side by side with the 
Waacs. 

Others, the telegraphists and telephonists 
are in the Signalling Corps and these are the 
only ones who wear Army badges. They work 
under the Officers Commanding Signals and are 
so successful that the officers want thousands 
more. 

Another small group are called the "Hush 
Waacs." There are only about a dozen of them 
and they have come from the Censor's Office 
and between them have a thorough knowledge of 
all modern languages. They are decoding sig- 
nalled and written messages, script of every kind. 



228 Women and War Work 

Numbers more are motor car and transport 
drivers working with A. S. C. 

An intensely interesting piece of work at the 
front in which the Waacs now are, and in which 
French women have worked for a very long time, 
and are still working in large numbers, is the 
great "Salvage" work of the Army. In the Sal- 
vage centre at one ordnance base 30,000 boots are 
repaired in a week. They are divided into three 
classes — those that can be used again by the men 
at the front — those for men on the lines of com- 
munication — those for prisoners and coloured 
labour, and uppers that are quite useless are cut 
up into laces. They salve old helmets, old web 
and leather equipments, haversacks, rifles, horse 
shoes, spurs, and every conceivable kind of bat- 
tlefield debris. 

The work of repair and of renewal of clothing, 
which goes over to England to be dealt with, is 
a wonder of economy. 

The women are helping in postal work and we 
handle about three million letters and packets a 
day in France for our Army there. 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 229 

One other piece of work that falls to trained 
women gardeners in the Corps, is the care of the 
graves in France. There are so many graves in 
little clusters, lonely by the roadside, and in 
great cemeteries. They mark them clearly and 
they make them more beautiful with flowers. 
No work they have come to do, is done more faith- 
fully than this act of reverence to our heroic 
and honoured dead. 

The Y. W. C. A.'s Blue Triangle is going to 
be the same symbol for the Waacs as the Ked 
Triangle for the Soldiers. They are building- 
huts everywhere in France and in England, and 
the girls like them as much as the men do. 

In these recreation huts the girls enjoy them- 
selves and there are evenings when the soldier 
friends come in, too, and have a good time with 
them, for Waacs and the soldiers know each 
other and meet at all the Bases and Camps. 

They dance and play games, and act, or sing, 
or come and talk, and one visitor tells us of see- 
ing a girl doing machining at the end of a hut 



230 Women and War Work 

with one soldier turning the handle for her and 
another helping. 

One evening at a dance some gallant Aus- 
tralian N. C. O.'s arrived carrying two enormous 
pans of a famous salad, that was their specialty, 
as their contribution to the provisions. So life 
in the Waacs is not all work — there is play, too, 
wisely. Every camp has a trained V. A. D. 
worker to look after the girls in case of sickness. 
If the case is bad they are sent over to Endell 
Street Hospital in London. 

The Navy is going to follow the Army — so our 
women will be "Soldier and Sailor too," and we 
shall have to sing, "Till the girls come home," as 
well. 

The Admiralty has decided to employ women 
on various duties on shore hitherto done by naval 
ratings, and to establish a Women's Royal Naval 
Service. The women will have a distinctive uni- 
form and the service will be confined to women 
employed on definite duties directly connected 
with the Royal Navy. It is not intended at pres- 
ent to include those serving in the Admiralty 



The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps 231 

departments or the Royal Dockyards or other 
civil establishments under the Admiralty. There 
are thousands of women in these already, as there 
were in Army pay offices, etc., before the Waacs 
were formed. 

Dame Katherine Furse, G.B.E., will be Di- 
rector of the Women's Royal Naval Service, and 
will be responsible under the Second Sea Lord, 
for its administration and organization. 

Already we hear they are likely to be known 
as the "Wrens." And so our women are inside ^ 
the organized forces of defence of our Country — 
the last line of usefulness and service. 



THE WAR AND MORALS 

"Evils which have been allowed to flourish for 
centuries cannot be destroyed in a day. If the 
nation really wishes to be freed from the conse- 
quences of prostitution it must deal with the 
sources of prostitution by a long series of social, 
educational, and economic reforms. The ulti- 
mate remedy is the acceptance of a single stand- 
ard of morality for men and women, and the 
recognition that man is meant to be the master 
and not the slave of his body. There are thou- 
sands of men both in the army and out of it who 
know this, and for whom the streets of London 
have no dangers." 

— Dr. Helen Wilson. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE WAR AND MORALS 

THE unprecedented state of things pro- 
duced by the war brought in its train 
serious anxiety as to moral conditions, not 
only in regard to the relation between the sexes 
but in other ways. The gathering of every kind 
of man together in camps creates great problems. 
Young boys, who had never been away from home 
before, who know very little of the world or of 
temptations, were often flung in with very un- 
desirable companions. There were many risks 
and many hard tests and the parents who see 
their young boys go to camp without preparing 
them, or warning them, do their boys a great dis- 
service and I have known of sons who bore in 
their hearts a feeling of having been badly treated 
by their parents, that would never die, for being 
sent without a word of counsel into these things. 
It is not only actions — corrupt thoughts are 
the most evil of all — and to help to give our boys 



236 Women and War Work 

the greatest possession, moral courage, founded 
on knowledge, is our finest gift. 

There were temptations to think less cleanly, 
to hear things said without protest and to say 
them later. There were drinking temptations 
and one used to wonder with a sick heart, what 
mothers would feel if they could see these young 
boys of theirs sometimes, so pathetically young 
and so foolish. There was also in these great 
camps of men — let us realize that quite clearly — 
great good for the boys and the men — good that 
far outweighs the evil. All the good of discipline, 
all they gained by their coming together for a 
great cause, all they gained in that great com- 
radeship and service for each other, and in their 
self-sacrifice for their country and the world. The 
wonder and beauty of what it is, and means 
some of our own men have told us — among them 
one who died, Donald Hankey, and has left us a 
rich treasure in his works. And we all know 
it in our own men — that abiding spirit that is 
the vision without which the people perish. 

But there are and were evils to fight and men 



The War and Morals 237 

and women to help. The huts and canteens and 
guesthouses are great agencies for good — as well 
as for comfort. Loneliness, and nowhere to go, 
and no one to talk to, are conditions that make 
for mischief. 

Then there were the girls at the outbreak of 
the war, excited by all that was happening, not 
yet busy as they nearly all are now, feeling that 
the greatest thing was to know the soldiers and 
talk and walk with them, and flocking around 
camps and barracks, being foolish and risking 
worse. 

The National Union of Women Workers de- 
cided to take action about this and drew up a 
scheme which they submitted to the Chief Com- 
missioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Edward 
Henry, K.C.V.O. This scheme was for women of 
experience and knowledge of girls to patrol in 
the camps and barrack areas, and talk to girls 
who were behaving foolishly, and try to influence 
them for good. It was felt and it turned out to 
be quite accurate that the mere presence of these 
women would make girls and men behave better. 



238 Women and War Work 

Sir Edward Henry approved of the idea and ar- 
ranged that each Patrol should have a card 
signed by him t© be carried while on duty, au- 
thorizing the Patrols to seek and get the assist- 
ance of the Police, if necessary, and the Patrols 
wore an armlet with badge and number. 

Their work in London proved so successful 
that the Home Office recommended the adoption 
of the scheme in provincial centres, where the 
Chief Constables authorized them and later the 
War Office asked for more Patrols in some of the 
camp areas and spoke very highly of their work. 

A woman Patrol is generally a woman who is 
busy in her own home or profession all day, but 
who gives some hours one or two evenings a 
week to this work. 

They have done the work faithfully and well, 
and have exceeded in their success all anticipa- 
tions. There are about 3,000 Patrols in the 
Kingdom; of these eighty-five are engaged in 
special work in London and paid by the Com- 
missioner of Police. Two are engaged in work 
at Woolwich Arsenal. Two are Park Keepers 



The War and Morals 239 

appointed by the Board of Works and are work- 
ing in Kensington Gardens, and their names 
were submitted to the King before appointment. 
They have the power of arrest. 

A subsidy has been granted to the Women's 
Patrol Committee for the training of Women 
Patrols of £400 a year. In many big towns ad- 
mirable work has been done. 

In Edinburgh the Patrol Committee was asked 
by H. M. Office of Works to help the men park 
keepers in keeping order in the King's Park. 

This they have done with great success. Dub- 
lin has just taken over two women Patrols as 
paid workers. 

The Military, Admiralty, Police, and Civil 
Authorities have all united in praising their 
work and any one can realize how much patience 
and tact and knowledge it calls for, and what 
it means to have had it done for over three years. 
The patrols have not been content only to talk 
to the girls, though it is wonderful what that 
alone can do. They have succeeded in getting 
them to come to clubs and they have worked in 



240 Women and War Work 

connection with the mixed clubs of which we 
have several very successful ones. A mixed club 
is very useful and helpful, but it must be well 
run by a good committee of men and women, 
and you need people of judgment and knowledge 
and tactful firmness in charge of it, if it is to 
be the best kind of club. 

We have found an admirable thing is to have 
evenings for men friends in the Girls' Clubs when 
the girls can invite their men friends in, and 
have music and games and entertainment. 

When Patrols were started, there was a very 
strong feeling that there ought to be women po- 
lice, a much needed change in our country. 
We had none when war broke out, but in Sep- 
tember, 1914, Miss Darner Dawson founded the 
Women Police Service. When members joined 
they were trained in drill, first aid, practical 
instructions in Police Duties, gained by actual 
work in streets, parks, etc. They studied special 
acts relating to women and children and civil 
and criminal law and the procedure and rules 
of evidence in Police Courts. 



The War and Morals 241 

Their first work was done in Grantham where, 
in November, 1914, the Women's Central Com- 
mittee of Grantham elected a Women Police Sub- 
committee to provide a fund for the payment of 
two Police Women to work with the Chief Con- 
stable. In February the following letter was 
written about their work : 

"To the Chief Officer, Women Police,— I un- 
derstand that there is some idea of removing the 
two members of the Women Police now stationed 
here. I trust that this is not the case. The ser- 
vices of the two ladies in question have proved 
of great value. They have removed sources of 
trouble to the troops in a manner that the Mili- 
tary Police could not attempt. Moreover, I have 
no doubt whatever that the work of these two 
ladies in an official capacity is a great safeguard 
to the moral welfare of young girls in the town. 
(Signed) F. Hammersley, M.G., 
Commanding 11th Division, 

Grantham." 

16 



242 Women and War Work 

and in November, 1915, they were made official 
Police by the City Council. In July, 1916, the 
Police Miscellaneous Provisions Act was passed, 
which encouraged the employment of Police- 
women by stating that pay of the police "shall be 
deemed to include the pay of any women who 
may be employed by a Police Authority/' etc. 

Now there are thirty-four Policewomen in our 
Boroughs, but their position is still anomalous 
and unsatisfactory, as they do not come under 
the Police Act for purposes of discipline, pay, 
pensions, and compensation, but this will come. 
Meantime the Women Police Service goes on 
doing its admirable work of training and pro- 
viding Volunteer and Semi-official police (sup- 
ported by women's funds), in addition to those 
appointed by local authorities in Boroughs. 

These semi-official police women are able to 
do a great deal, if the Chief Constable is friendly, 
and, naturally, they are appointed where he is so. 
They are often made Probation Officers and are 
used for children's and girl's and women's cases. 
Their work leads more and more to the official 



The War and Morals 243 

appointments and in this work as in so many of 
our successes, we women have achieved the re- 
sults by having the voluntary organizations and 
training ourselves first and proving our fitness. 

From my own experience, it is impossible to 
speak too highly of the kindness and willingness 
of many Chief Constables to do everything to 
teach and help the women. 

The Women Police Service naturally insists on 
a high standard of training and this has been of 
great value. 

A big development of women police work has 
been in the Munition factories where now about 
700 women are employed in this capacity in 
England, Scotland and Wales. 

The report of the Women's Police Service gives 
the following interesting account. 

"In 1916 the Department Explosives Supply 
of the Ministry of Munitions applied to Sir 
Edward Henry for a force of Women Police to 
act as guards for certain of H. M. Factories. Sir 
Edward Henry sent for the two chief officers of 
the Women Police Service, and informed them 



244 Women and War Work 

that it was his intention to recommend them to 
the Ministry of Munitions for the supplying of 
the Women Police required. They thanked the 
Commissioner for his expression of trust in their 
capabilities, and in July an agreement was 
drawn up between the Minister of Munitions and 
the Chief Officer and Chief Superintendent of the 
Women Police Service, who were appointed to 
act as the Minister's representatives for the 
'training, supplying and controlling' of the Force 
required. The duties of the Policewomen were 
to include checking the entry of women into the 
factory, examining passports, searching for con- 
traband, namely, matches, cigarettes and alco- 
hol; dealing with complaints of petty offences; 
patrolling the neighbourhood for the protection 
of women going home from work ; accompanying 
the women to and fro in the workmen's trains to 
the neighbouring towns where they lodge; ap- 
pearing in necessary cases at the Police Court, 
and assisting the magistrates in dealing with 
such cases, if required to. The Force for each 
factory was to consist of an inspector, sergeants 



The War and Morals 245 

and constables. Women to be trained for this 
work were at once enrolled by the Women Police 
Service and trained under a Staff of Officers. 

" Since the inauguration of factory-police work 
for women in July, 1916, a marked success has 
attended the organisation, which has resulted in 
almost daily applications for Policewomen for 
factories situated in every part of the United 
Kingdom. We are not able to give a list of these 
factories nor to mention their names in our re- 
port of the work carried on by them, but we may 
say that at the present time we are supplying 
H. M. Factories, National Filling Factories and 
Private Controlled Factories. We are sure that 
our patrons and subscribers will feel as proud 
as we are of the intrepid Policewomen who for 
the past fourteen months have been carrying out 
these duties, which, we believe, no women have 
hitherto dreamt of undertaking, and which have 
called forth qualities of tact, discretion, cool 
courage and endurance that would compare well 
with any of those whom we call heroes in the 
fio-ht at the front. We would call attention to 



246 Women and War Work 

one factory from which both the military and 
male Police Guard has been withdrawn. The fac- 
tory employs several thousand women in the 
manufacture and disposal of some of the most 
dangerous explosives demanded by the war. 
When an air raid is in progress the operatives 
are cleared from the factory and the sheds and 
magazines are left to the sole charge of the Fire- 
men and Policewomen, who take up the respec- 
tive posts allotted to them. The Policewomen 
who guard the various magazines know that they 
hold their lives in their hands. We are proud to 
report that not one woman has failed at her post 
or shirked her duty in the hour of danger. The 
duties assigned to the Policewomen and their 
officers in these factories have increased consid- 
erably in scope during the past year. In one fac- 
tory the force of Policewomen numbers 160 
under one Chief Inspector, two Inspectors and 
twelve Sergeants, all of whom have been sworn 
in and take entire charge of all police cases deal- 
ing with women. They arrest, convey the pris- 
oners to the Women Police Charge Station, keep 



, 

LiBUiyaikJL 


. r d 


■W--H - 4 


■ «■ fl| Hf 


1 . si • 




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Police Women 



The War and Morals 247 

their own charge sheets and other official docu- 
ments, lock the prisoner in the cells, keep guard 
over her, convey her to the Court House for trial, 
and if convicted convey her to the prison. A 
short time ago the Inspector of Policewomen in 
one of H. M. Factories was instructed by the 
authorities to send a Policewoman to a distant 
town to fetch a woman prisoner, an old offender. 
The Policewoman was armed with a warrant, 
railway vouchers and handcuffs. The prisoner 
was handed over to the Policewoman by the Po- 
liceman, and the Policewoman and her charge 
returned without trouble. The prisoner ex- 
pressed her relief and gratitude at being escorted 
by a Policewoman, and behaved well throughout 
the journey. The Policewoman reported that she 
was given every courtesy and assistance by both 
police and railway officials. 

"We believe this constitutes the first time in 
history that women guards have been entrusted 
with the care and custody of their fellow-women 
when charged with breaking the law." 



248 Women and War Work 

Other pieces of important and difficult work 
have been undertaken by women. 

There have been, unfortunately, cases in which 
the soldier's wife, left at home, has behaved 
badly and been unfaithful. Men often write 
from the trenches to the Chief Constable to ask if 
charges made to them in letters about their wives 
are true. Naturally the Chief Constable asks 
the women to investigate these charges. Some- 
times the charges are quite unfounded, simply 
spiteful and malicious and the woman and Chief 
Constable write and say so. 

In other cases the husband knows of unfaith- 
fulness and writes to the Army Pay Office asking 
to have the allowance stopped to his wife. The 
Army Pay Office never acts on any such letter 
without securing a report from the Chief Con- 
stable, and again the woman is needed, and there 
is frequently the question of the children as well. 
Their allowance, of course, never ceases but they 
may go to some relative or be disposed of in some 
way. 

These cases are infinitesimal in number. 



The War and Morals 249 

After the outbreak of the war there were many 
scares. Every one in our country knows now 
how a myth is established. We have left the 
stage behind where people told you they knew, 
from a friend, who knew a friend who knew some 
one else who saw it, who was in the War Office, 
etc., etc., etc. — that England was invaded — that 
the Navy was all down — or the German Navy 
was all down — that we were going to do this, that, 
or the other impossible thing. 

Dame Rumour had a joyous time in the early 
days of the war and we suffered from the people 
who were not only quite certain that everything 
was wrong morally, but told us that the illegiti- 
mate birth rate was going to be enormous. Their 
accusations against our ordinary girls were 
monstrous. There was some excitement and 
foolishness, but anybody who was really working 
and dealing with it as the Patrol were, knew the 
accusations were ridiculous. The illegitimate 
birth rate of our country is lower than before, 
which is the best reply to, and the vindication 



250 Women and War Work 

of the men of our armies and our girls against, 
these absurd attacks. 

Another scare was about the drinking of 
women. Soldiers' wives were attacked in this 
connection and the same kind of wild accusation 
made, so much so that a committee was ap- 
pointed to go into the whole question (1915), 
presided over by Mrs. Creighton, President of 
the National Union of Women Workers. 

In my experience a great deal of this talk was 
caused by the fact that many women, who had 
never done social work, and who knew nothing 
of real conditions, started to go among the people 
and were shocked and overwhelmed by what were 
unfortunately normal wrong conditions, and lost 
all sense of perspective. Some women did drink — 
true — but I found they were generally the women 
who always had done it, and who perhaps in 
some cases, having more money of their own and 
no husbands to deal with, drank a little more. 

The findings of the Committee showed this 
clearly and they made some recommendations, 
especially recommending that the Central Board 



The War and Morals 251 

for the Control of the Liquor Traffic proceeded 
to do on its creation, restriction of hours of sale. 
Our restrictions make the sale of liquor legal 
only from 12 noon to 2.30 and from 6.30 to 8.30 
or 9 P. M. Our convictions for drunkenness for 
women have fallen very low and for men, too. 
There is very much less drinking in our country 
and things are very much improved. 

These attacks on soldiers' wives were naturally 
much resented as their work in the homes and 
industries, with their men away, and all their 
difficulties, has not always been easy. We find 
there is a little more difficulty with the boys. 
They miss the fathers' discipline and there has 
been some trouble through that, but such magni- 
ficent agencies as the Boy Scouts, who have 
helped us everywhere in the war, do great good. 

The problem of dealing with the prevention of 
immorality has been a big one. The Women Pa- 
trols and the Women Police have been used in 
London in Waterloo Road (which had a bad 
reputation) and in parks, etc. The G. R. Volun- 
teer Corps of men who meet the soldier arriving 



252 Women and War Work 

in London at the stations do a very good work. 

In the Army and Navy excellent leaflets and 
booklets were issued dealing with the question 
in a very straightforward and admirable way. 

The Council for Moral and Social Hygiene and 
the National Council for Combating Venereal 
Diseases has been doing a great work. The lat- 
ter, which is a body set up as a result of the 
Government Commission on Venereal Diseases, 
had done a great deal of educational work and 
has set up an organization over the country. 
The Commission recommended much fuller facil- 
ities for free treatment for those suffering from 
these diseases in every town and district. 

A Criminal Law Amendment Bill has been 
brought in and it improves our existing law in 
many ways and strengthens it. There has been 
much controversy about certain of its provisions, 
some dealing with power to send young girls to 
homes. There is a very strong feeling among 
many of our social workers that Rescue Work in 
our country altogether needs overhauling and 
change, and new experiments are being tried. 



The War and Morals 253 

Wars have almost invariably in the past meant 
an enormous increase in venereal diseases on 
the return of the army in the civil population. 
Armies lose large numbers of men by them, and 
every person must feel it is their plain duty to 
leave no means untried and no measures unused 
that could help. 

The woman who lives by her immoral earnings 
is, like the man who is immoral and uncontrolled, 
a serious danger and menace to her country and 
to generations yet unborn. 

The problems that arise from the existence of 
these two groups are the business of all men and 
women. The problems are those of providing 
decent and wholesome recreation and surround- 
ings, of helping men and women to meet under 
right conditions, of giving the right kind of in- 
formation and guidance to the soldier and the 
girl, of realizing what drink does in this traffic, 
and the fundamental task of working to create 
better social, economic and moral conditions. 

There is no need nor is it desirable to have 
masses of people suffer unnecessary misery by a 



254 Women and War Work 

knowledge of the exact nature of this disease — 
which leads sometimes to morbidity and often 
to a frenzied desire to do something at once, 
before they really know anything about the ques- 
tion and what has been done. 

There are three questions that ought to be 
answered in the affirmative before any legislation 
or preventive treatment is decided on. 

Will the proposed action apply equally to men 
and to women, to rich and to poor. 

Will it tend to increase and not undermine the 
powers of self-control? 

Will it improve morals in the nation and ele- 
vate them? 

Repressive measures by themselves achieve 
nothing. Preventive measures of every prac- 
tical and sound kind we want, but most of all we 
need to inculcate the truth that 

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead man to sovereign power." 
It is not enough to prevent and teach. We 



The War and Morals 255 

should be willing to help up, to save, to love, and 
we should never be self-righteous in our help. 

Who among us has the right to cast the first 
stone? 



WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR 

WOMEN 

"Give her of the fruits of her lands and let her 
own words praise her in the gates." 

— Prov., Chap 31. 



17 



CHAPTER XIII 

WHAT THE WAR HAS DONE FOR 
WOMEN 

THE war has done already, with us, such 
great things for women, so many of them 
so naturally accepted now, that it is almost 
difficult to get back in thought, and realize where 
we stood when it broke out. 

General Smuts, in one of his speeches, said, 
"Under stress of great difficulty practically every- 
thing breaks down ultimately, and the only 
things that survive are really the simple human 
feelings of loyalty and comradeship to your fel- 
lows, and patriotism, which can stand any strain 
and bear you through all difficulty and privation. 
We soldiers know the extraordinary value of 
these simple feelings, how far they go and what 
strain they can bear, and how, ultimately, they 
support the whole weight of civilization." 

In this war our men, in their dealings with us, 
have got down more and more to simple funda- 



t 



260 Women and War Work 

mental truths and facts — loyalty and comrade- 
ship, founded on our common patriotism. We 
have got nearer and nearer to the ideal so many 
of us long for, equal right to serve and help. The 
great fundamental establishment of political 
rights for women has come with us. When war 
broke out, women's suffrage was winning all the 
time a greater and greater mass of adherents, a 
majority of the House was pledged to vote for 
it and had been for years, the Trade Unions and 
Labour Party stood solid for it, but the motive 
to act seemed lacking. 

War came, and every political party in our 
country laid aside political agitation. No party 
meetings have been held since August, 1914. 
Suffragists and anti-suffragists did the same. 
The great body of constitutional suffragists kept 
their organization intact but used it for "sus- 
taining the vital energies of the nation.'' Relief 
Work, Hospital Work and Supplies, Child Wel- 
fare, Comforts, Workrooms, help for professional 
women, work for Belgian refugees, work in can- 
teens and huts, work for the Soldiers and Sailors 






What the War Has Done for Women 261 

Families' Association, Schools for Mothers, 
Girls' Clubs — into everything the Suffrage so- 
cieties fling themselves with ardour, zeal and 
ability. No women knew better how to organize, 
no women better how to educate and win help. 
They formed an admirable Women's Interests 
Committee, and looked after all women's inter- 
ests excellently. 

W T hen the Government issued its first appeal 
for women volunteers for munitions and land, 
etc., it asked the Suffrage societies to circulate 
them and to help them to secure the needed 
labour from women. 

As the war went on it became clearer and 
clearer that the men of the country saw more and 
more vividly why suffragists had asked for votes 
— and more and more were impressed with the 
value of their work. At meetings to do propa- 
ganda for Government appeals, when women 
spoke on the needs of the country, men every- 
where, although it had nothing to do with the 
appeal, and had never been mentioned, declared 



262 Women and War Work 

their conversion to Women's Suffrage in the 
War. 

Women pointed out that they did not want 
Women's Suffrage as a reward — but as a simple 
right. They had not worked for a reward, but 
for their country, as any citizen would, but, in 
our country, the great converting power is prac- 
tical proof of value and they had that overwhelm- 
ingly in our work. The Press came out practic- 
ally solidly for Women's Suffrage. The work of 
women was praised in every paper and one de- 
clared, "It cannot be tolerable that we should 
return to the old struggle about admitting them 
to the franchise." Eminent Anti-Suffragists, in- 
side and outside of the House of Commons, 
frankly admitted their conversion. Mr. Asquith, 
the old enemy of Women's Suffrage, said in a 
memorable speech: "They presented to me not 
only a reasonable, but, I think, from their point 
of view, an unanswerable case . . . They say 
that when the war comes to an end, and when 
the process of industrial reconstruction has to 
be set on foot, have not the women a special 



What the War Has Done for Women 263 

claim to be heard on the many questions which 
will arise directly affecting their interests, and 
possibly meaning for them large displacement of 
labour? I cannot think that the House will deny 
that, and, I say quite frankly, that I cannot deny 
that claim." It was clear the whole question of 
franchise would need to be gone into— the sol- 
diers' vote was lost to him under our system 
when he was away, and the sailors' redistribu- 
tion was long overdue, an election, as things 
were, would be absolutely unrepresentative. So 
after several attempts to deal with the problem 
in sections, a Committee was set up under the 
Speaker of the House of Commons to go into the 
whole question of Franchise reform and regis- 
tration. 

The Committee was composed of five Peers and 
twenty-seven members of the House of Commons, 
and started its work in October, 1916, and in its 
report, April, 1917, it recommended, by a ma- 
jority, that a measure of enfranchisement should 
be given to women. 



264 Women and War Work 

The National Union of Women's Suffrage So- 
cieties and the Consultative Committee, which 
had been formed in 1916 by the N. U. W. S. S., 
of representatives of all constitutional societies, 
presented various memorials, notably an admir- 
able memorandum of women's work and opinion 
in favour, prepared by the National Union for 
the Speakers' Conference during its sittings. 
After its recommendations while the bill was 
being drafted, Mrs. Henry Fawcett, LL.D., the 
President of the N. U. W. S. S., headed a depu- 
tation received by the Premier, Mr. Lloyd George, 
who has always been a supporter of Women's 
Suffrage. This was certainly one of the most 
representative and interesting deputations that 
ever went to Downing Street. It numbered over 
fifty and every woman in it represented a great 
section of industrial and war workers — Miss 
Mary MacArthur, the Trade Union Leader was 
there, and Miss Margaret Bondfield, Mrs. Flora 
Annie Steele, the authoress; Lady Forbes Kob- 
ertson, for actresses; Miss Adelaide Anderson, 
our Chief Women Factory Inspector; Mrs. Oliver 



What the War Has Done for Women 265 

Strachey, Parliamentary Honourable Secretary 
of the National Union, whose work has been tire- 
less and invaluable in the House ; a woman muni- 
tion worker, a woman conductor, a railway 
woman worker, a woman chemist, a woman from 
a bank, a clerk, a shipyard worker, a nurse, 
a V. A. D., an eminent woman Doctor, a peeress 
in Lady Cowdray, who has done so much for the 
British Women's Hospitals and so many other 
war objects, and women representatives of every 
calling in the nation at peace and w r ar. Mrs. 
Pankhurst, who has been very active in war 
work, was also present on the Premier's invita- 
tion, and Mrs. Fawcett brought a Welshwoman 
who made her plea in her own language, the 
Premier's own, too, and the one he loves to hear. 
In his reply, he assured them the bill would con- 
tain a measure of enfranchisement for women 
as drafted, and he was quite sure the House 
would carry it. 

The recommendations of the Speakers' Confer- 
ence were an agreed compromise, and the Repre- 
sentation of the People Bill, as it was called on 



266 Women and War Work 

its introduction, has gone through very much on 
the lines of the recommendations. It arranges 
for postal or proxy votes for the soldier, the 
sailor and the merchant seaman, it simplifies the 
qualifications for men, it retains the University 
vote for men and extends it to women, and it en- 
franchises women of thirty years of age on a 
residence qualification, and all wives of voters 
of the same age. It disfranchises, for the time, 
the conscientious objector who will do no na- 
tional service. The age at which our men vote 
is twenty-one. The higher age of the women was 
a compromise, which was accepted by all women's 
societies and by labour women, though it was not 
the terms they stood for — equality. 

If we had it on the same terms as men, we 
should very greatly outnumber the men. There 
were over a million more women than men before 
the war and a new electorate greater than all the 
men's numbers brought in at once was not con- 
sidered wise. To press for it would have wrecked 
our chances. 

This measure enfranchises six million women, 



What the War Has Done for Women 267 

and about ten million men are now voters, so we 
have a very fair proportion. 

The women's clause was carried, with only 
thirty-five dissentients and later only seventeen 
voted against it. 

In this same bill, with practically no discus- 
sion, an amendment was carried enfranchising 
the wives of local government electors. 

It is difficult to adequately express the confi- 
dence, the desire, and the willingness to co- 
operate, that there is now between our men and 
women. 

We know, too, that the great woman's move- 
ment of our country, which has worked to this 
end for fifty years and numbered our greatest 
women among its adherents, has had much to do 
with the ability of our women to take the great 
part they have in this crisis. If women had not 
toiled and opened education and opportunities 
to women, and preached the necessity of full 
service, we could not have done it. 

One great thing the war has done for our 
women is to draw us all closely together — in 



268 Women and War Work 

common sorrows, hopes and fears, we find how 
much we are one and in so much of our work 
women of every rank of life are together. We 
had that union before in many ways, but never 
so completely as now. Punch has a delightful 
picture that summed up how we are mixed in 
soldier's canteens, and huts and buffets, and Hos- 
pitals, which show a little Londoner saying to a 
meek member of the aristocracy "washing up," 
"Nar, then, Lady Halexandra, 'urry up with them 
plaites," and we have an amusing little play of 
the same kind. The society girl who washes 
down the Hospital steps, and washes up for 
hours, and carries meals up and down stairs in 
her work, week after week, and month after 
month, and year after year, in our Hospitals, 
knows what work is now, and the soldier who is 
served, and the soldier's sister and wife, learns 
something, too, about her that is worth learning. 
We have also learned a great deal in our wel- 
fare work, and the welfare supervisors and the 
workers both have benefited, and the heads of 
the innumerable hostels, which we have built 



What the War Has Done for Women 269 

everywhere for our girls — dozens in our new 
Government-built munition cities, have been of 
very real help and service to the girls. A tactful, 
sensible, educated woman has a great deal to give 
that helps the younger girl, and can look after 
and advise her as to health, work, leisure and 
amusements in a way that leaves real lasting 
benefit. 

In the munition works, well educated women, 
women with plenty of money, women who never 
worked before, work year after year beside the 
working girl. Just at first some of the working 
girls were not quite sure of her, but it is all right 
long, long ago, and they mutually admire each 
other. The well-off woman works her hours and 
takes her pay, and takes it very proudly. I have 
been told many times by these women who, for 
the first time know the joy of earning money, 
"I never felt so proud in my life as when I got 
my first week's money." And the men in the 
factories learn a lot, too. "Women have been 
too much kept back," was the comment of a fore- 
man in a shell factory to the Chief Woman Fac- 



270 Women and War Work 

tory Inspector on a visit she was paying to it. 
The skilled men, teaching the women, have 
learned a great deal about them, too, and have 
helped the women in so many ways. Men have 
been amazed at the ability and power and capa- 
city for work of the women and are, on the whole, 
very willing to say so and express their admira- 
tion. 

One munition girl writes: "The timekeeper, 
quite a gorgeous gentleman in uniform, gave us 
quite a welcome. . . . The charge-hand of the 
Welder's shop helped us to start, and stayed with 
us most of Friday. He was most kind, and 
showed us the best way to tackle each job, did 
one for us, and then watched us doing it." 

Another says, "Our foreman is a dear old man, 
so kind and full of fun. The men welders are 
awfully good to us." 

In considering the practical facts of new 
opportunities for women, one thing is clear. 
Masses of our women took their new work as 
"temporary war workers," but as the war has 
gone on, it has become clearer and clearer that, 






What the War Has Done for Women 271 

in many cases, these tasks are going to be per- 
manently open to women. One reason is that 
many of the men will never return to take up 
their work again — another, that many of them 
will never return to what they did before. 

They have been living in the open-air, doing 
such different things, such big vistas have opened 
out that they will never be content to go back 
to some of their tasks. There is the other fact 
that we, like every other country, will need to 
repair and renovate so much, will need to create 
new and more industries, will need to add to our 
productiveness to pay off our burdens of debt, 
and to carry out our schemes of reconstruction, 
so women will still be needed. Our women, in 
still greater numbers, will not be able to marry, 
and the best thing for any nation and any set of 
women is to do work, and there will be plenty of 
room for all the work our women can do. Many 
will go back to home work, of course; there are 
large numbers who are working in our country, 
only while their husbands are away, and when 



272 Women and War Work 

they return will find their work in their homes 
again. 

We are offering special training opportunities 
to the young widow of the soldier or officer. 

In special branches of work our opportunities 
are very much greater and better. Medicine 
is one of the professions in which women have 
very specially made good. Better training op- 
portunities have opened, more funds have been 
raised to enable women of small means to get 
medical education, and the Queen herself gave 
a portion of a gift of money she received, for 
this purpose. Most medical appointments are 
open to them now and they have been urged by 
the great medical bodies to enter for training 
in still greater numbers in the different Uni- 
versities, and have done so. 

More research is being done by them in every 
department. In professions such as accountancy, 
architecture, analytical chemistry, more and 
more women are entering. In the banking world 
women have done very satisfactory work, and 
one London bank manager, asked to say what he 



What the War Has Done for Women 273 

thought of prospects after the war, says he is 
very strongly of opinion it will continue to be 
a profession for women after the war. This 
manager thinks the question of higher admin- 
istrative posts being open to women will depend 
entirely on themselves and their work, and what 
they prove capable of achieving and holding, they 
will certainly have. 

In the war, one profession, in particular, has 
come nearer to finding its rightful place than 
ever before — the teaching profession. Their sal- 
aries which, in too many cases, were disgrace- 
fully low, have been raised. The woman teacher 
has shown her capacity in new fields of work in 
the boys' schools, but it is in another sense that 
their profession, both men and women, but very 
specially the women, have achieved a very real 
gain in the war. 

The teachers of the country have done a very 
great deal of war work of every kind. The Na- 
tional Register of 1915 was largely done by their 
labour. The War Savings Associations and Com- 
mittees owe a great debt to teachers and inspec- 

18 



274 Women and War Work 

tors, who are the backbone of the movement, 
headmistresses are asked constantly to help in 
securing trained women, taught to work in Hos- 
pitals on their holidays, on land, in organizing 
supplies and comforts in canteens and clubs, and 
more and more are put on official Committees in 
their towns and districts. 

It means the teacher is finding the status and 
position the teachers in their profession ought to 
have in their communities, and the war has done 
a great deal towards achieving that desirable 
end, though there is still a good deal to be done. 

In the Government Service there has undoubt- 
edly been great opportunities for women, espe- 
cially those of organizing, executive and secre- 
tarial ability — and in many cases the payment in 
higher posts is identical for men and women, and 
higher posts, if they have the ability, are freely 
given to women and the whole position of women 
in our Civil Service is improved. In the very 
highest posts, such as those of Insurance and 
Feeble-minded Commissioners, etc., women before 
the war received the same salaries as men. 



What the War Has Done for Women 275 

The organizing ability and the common sense 
way in which our women in voluntary organiza- 
tion, quite rapidly, themselves decided what 
organizations were unnecessary and merely du- 
plicating others, and refused to help them, so that 
they died out quite quickly, roused admiration, 
and the war has educated vast numbers of women 
in organization and executive ability. Women 
who never in their lives organized anything, and 
never kept an account properly, are doing all 
kinds of useful work. One nice middle-aged lady 
whose War Savings Association accounts were 
being kept wrongly, or rather were not really 
being kept at all, when told they must be done 
fully and correctly by one of our National Com- 
mittee representatives, said, "Oh, but you see, 
I never did anything but crochet before the war" ; 
but we have succeeded in making even the crochet 
ladies keep accounts and do wonderful things. 

In the great world of mechanics and engineer- 
ing, women are doing a wonderful amount of 
work and, there is no doubt, will remain in cer- 
tain departments after the war. One danger 



276 Women and War Work 

there is in the women's attitude — so many of our 
women have learned one branch of work very 
quickly, that there probably will be a tendency 
to believe that anything can be learned as easily. 
There are only certain departments of mechanics 
that can be learned in a few months' time, and 
women will probably go on doing these. Such 
work as theirs in optical munitions, has shown 
their very special aptitude for it and in law- 
making, etc., they will be used more and more. 
Women have successfully done tool-setting and 
can go on with that. The training for civil and 
mechanical engineering is long, but there will be, 
if women are keen and will train, plenty of op- 
portunity for them in peace-time occupations in 
civil, mechanical or electrical branches in con- 
nection with municipal, sanitary and household 
questions and in laundries, farms, etc. The 
women architects and these women could very 
well co-operate closely. 

Women clerks and secretaries will remain 
largely after the war. Fewer men will want these 
posts as we are convinced there will be big 



What the War Has Done for Women 277 

movements among our men to more active work, 
to the land and to the Dominions overseas. 

Women on the land will in numbers stay there, 
and there is a distinct movement among women 
with capital to go in for farming, market gar- 
dening, bee-keeping, poultry-keeping, etc., still 
more. 

The war has made more of our fathers and 
mothers realize the right of their daughters to 
education and training, and there are very few 
parents in our country now, who think a girl 
needs to know nothing very practical, and has no 
need to go in for a profession. Our women's 
colleges have more students than ever and the 
war has done great things in breaking down 
these old conventional ideas. The war, in fact, 
has shaken the very foundations of the old Vic- 
torian beliefs in the limited sphere of women to 
atoms. Our sphere is now very much more what 
every human being's sphere is and ought to be — 
the place and work in which our capacity, ability 
or genius finds its fullest vent — and there is no 
need to worry about restricting women or any- 



278 Women and War Work 

one else to particular spheres — if they cannot 
do it, they cannot fill the sphere, and that test de- 
cides. The dear old Victorian dugouts grow fewer 
and fewer in number, but we never must forget 
that the great powers of women have not come in 
a night, miraculously, in the war. They are the 
result of long years of patient work before, and 
we women, who have had these great opportu- 
nities, must see to it that we nobly carry on the 
traditions of teaching and training and qualify- 
ing ourselves for service, bequeathed to us from 
older generations. 

One thing, too, despite the war tasks and 
strain, we have not lost sight of the fact that the 
great fundamental tasks of keeping the house, 
guarding and seeing to the children must be 
well done. Just for a little, some of our tasks of 
child welfare had fewer workers, but many of the 
women realized the value of all these tasks as 
supreme, and took up the work freely. Child 
welfare work in particular the Suffrage woman 
organized and worked, Glasgow Suffragists tak- 
ing on the visiting of babies, always done there, 



What the War Has Done for Women 279 

in a whole ward of the city, and in other towns 
they started Day Nurseries. 

Lord Rhondda at the Local Government Board 
instituted Baby week and we hope to found a 
Ministry of Health very soon. So in the War we 
have realized even more vividly how great and 
valuable and important these tasks of women are. 
A very great amount of work for child welfare 
has been done by our women in the war, and our 
infant death rate is going still lower. 

The war has done a great service in drawing 
women of all the Allied Nations together — a 
service whose greatness and magnitude it is not 
easy to fully realize. French and English men 
and women know so much more of each other 
now. Our hospitals in France, our Canteens for 
French Soldiers, as well as our own, our women 
and the French women working side by side in 
our army clerical departments and ordnance 
depots in France, the Belgians and French who 
are among us in such large numbers, make us 
known to each other. In Serbia we have made 
many friends and in Italy and Russia and Ro- 



280 Women and War Work 

mania, all links for the future, and helps to wider 
knowledge and understanding. It is on under- 
standing the hopes of the world rest, and we 
women have a great part to play in that. 

With America our link has always been very 
great and all the help, and gifts, and service 
America gave us before it entered the war, have 
been very precious to us. American women have 
given Hospitals and ambulances and everything 
possible in the way of succour and of service, 
and have died with our women in nursing ser- 
vice, as the men have in our ranks. 

Massachusetts sent a nurse to France, Miss 
Alice Fitzgerald, in memory of Edith Cavell, 
which shows the unity of your feeling and ours 
on that tragic execution, and her work under 
our War Office in Queen Alexandra's Imperial 
Army Nursing Service with the British Expe- 
ditionary Force, as well as the work of all the 
American nurses w T e have had helping us, is an- 
other link in the great chain. Our own great 
Commonwealth of Nations are nearer to each 
other than ever before. There were even people 



What the War Has Done for Women 281 

among us who thought a little as the enemy did 
that our Dominions would not stand by us — 
stupid and blind people. 

It is their fight as well as ours — the common 
fight of all free peoples, and all our united na- 
tions stand together, including those who only 
a few years ago were fighting us as brave foes. 

We have learned so much in great ways and in 
small ways, in economies and in the care of all 
our resources, too. We women are more careful 
in Britain now. We save food, and grow more, 
and produce more, and maids and mistresses 
work together to economize and help. We 
gather our waste paper and sell it or give it to 
the Ked Cross for their funds, give our bottles 
and our rags, waste no food and save and lend 
our money. We could not have been called a 
thrifty nation before the war — we are much more 
thrifty now, in many ways, though there are still 
things we could learn. 

In the Women's Army and in so much of our 
work we are learning discipline and united ser- 
vice — learning what it means to be proud of your 



282 Women and War Work 

corps and to feel the uniform you wear or the 
badge is something you must be worthy of — and 
it goes back to being worthy of your own flag 
and of the ideals for which we all stand in these 
days. 

And the young wives who are married and left 
behind, who bear their children with their hus- 
bands far away in danger, who have had no real 
homes yet, but who wait and hope, they are very 
wonderful in their courage and pluck — and, most 
of all, everywhere, our women, like our men, 
wisely refuse to be dreary. There are enough 
secret dark hours, but in our work we carry on 
cheerfully, the women know the soldiers' slogan, 
"Cheero," and to Britain and to "somewhere on 
the fronts," the same message goes and comes. 

Of the great spiritual worths and values, it has 
brought to women very much what it has brought 
to men. All eternal things are more real, all eter- 
nal truths more clearly perceived. When the 
whole foundations of life rock under us, in where 
"there is no change, neither shadow of turning," 
the heart rests more surely in these days. 



What the War Has Done for Women 283 

It has brought us agonies and tears, weariness 
and pain, self-denial and great sorrows, but it 
has brought such riches of self-sacrifice, such 
service, such love, has shown us such peaks of 
revelation and vision to which the soul and the 
nation can attain, that we count ourselves rich, 
though so much has gone. 

To think of what we might have been if we had 
refused to bear our share — to look back on the 
evils of luxury and selfishness that were creeping 
over us, makes us feel that we may have lost 
some things, but "what shall it profit a man if 
he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." 
And we have saved our soul. The souls of the 
nations travail in a new birth through a night of 
agony and tears. The purposes being worked out 
are so great, that it is difficult for us to see them 
with our limited human vision, but in great mo- 
ments of insight we do see, and having seen, go 
back to our tasks in the light of that vision, know- 
ing that though now we fight in dim shadows 
with monstrous and awful evils of mankind's 



284 



Women and War Work 



creation, the day is coining nearer and the light 
will come. 

An age is dying and a new age comes, and 
what it shall be only the men and women of the 
world can answer. 



RECONSTRUCTION 

"The tumult and the shouting dies — 
The captains and the Kings depart — 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, 
An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of Hosts ; be with us yet, 
Lest we forget, lest we forget." 

— Rudyard Kipling. 

"We shall not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall our sword sleep in our hand, 
Till we have built Jerusalem, 

In England's green and pleasant land." 

— W. Blake. 



CHAPTER XIV 

RECONSTRUCTION 

AND what is to come after? The first and 
the last and the greatest thing to do is to 
win the war and to get the right settlement. 
Unless we finish this struggle with the nations 
free, there can be no real reconstruction. The 
greatest work of reconstruction — the fundamen- 
tal work — will be at the peace table. Those who 
are giving everything and doing everything to 
gain victory for the Allies, are the true recon- 
structors of the world. 

The first great task of reconstruction is victory 
and the second is right peace settlements. 

We cannot say that anything we can do will 
make future peace certain, but we can see that 
just and righteous settlements are made, so that 
the foundations are laid that ought to ensure 
peace in the future. There is no real peace 
possible while injustices exist. 

There is no real peace possible while evil and 
good contend for mastery, and the spiritual con- 



288 Women and War Work 

flicts of man are, and will be, as terrible as any 
physical conflicts. While mankind stands where 
it does now, it is well that against corruption of 
spirit and thought, we can use our bodies as 
shields. 

The fact that we have had to fight Germany 
physically, shows clearly that spiritually and 
mentally we were unable to make them see truth 
and honour, and the meaning of freedom, and 
that the ideal of peace made no real appeal to 
them. 

They built up in their nation great thought 
forces of aggression, of belief in militarism, of 
worship of might, of belief that war paid, and 
was in itself good, that there was no conscience 
higher than the state. They even worship God 
as a sort of tribal God whom they call upon to 
work with them — not a question as to whether 
they are on God's side — no — an assertion that 
God is on theirs. 

That was their thought — and the thoughts of 
the other nations were bent on problems of free- 
dom and growing democracy, of widening oppor- 
tunities, of political and commercial interest, 



Reconstruction 289 

were, on the whole, the vaguely good thoughts of 
evolving democracies (with notable exceptions), 
but not the clear powerful thoughts needed to 
fight effectually those of Germany in the fields 
of intellect and spirit. 

People did not see the full evil of Germany's 
thought — it was tied up with so much that was 
efficient and good and able, and we were only 
half articulate as to our own beliefs, and not 
even thoroughly clear or agreed about them, and 
Germany considered us slack and inefficient, and 
believed we might even be induced to consent to 
seeing Europe overrun and doing nothing. We 
did not believe, despite warning, that any nation 
thought as Germany did and we seemed, in their 
minds, to be people to be dominated and swept 
over. 

One interesting fact to note is that Germany, 
despite its boasted knowledge of psychology, did 
not realise that England possesses a definite sub- 
conscious mind which always guides its actions. 
The sub-conscious mind of England is a desire 
for fair play, for justice, and a very definite sense 
of freedom. England is the creator of self- 

19 



290 Women and War Work 

government and its sub-conscious mind, built up 
for centuries, is a very definite and real thing. 

The sub-conscious mind of Germany, filled 
with these dominating ideas of power and Welt- 
macht and militarism, goes on, once set free, to 
its logical end, and it seems clearer and clearer 
that there is no real end to this struggle till we 
make the mind and soul of Germany realize its 
crimes and mistakes, till they are sane again 
and talk the A, B, C of civilization. The real 
reconstruction of the world begins there. 

That end reached and settlements justly done, 
we may consider schemes for a League of Nations 
and practical possibilities of work in interna- 
tional organizations to prevent disputes leading 
to war. 

The work of reconstruction must be interna- 
tional, as well as national, but the people who 
do, and will do, the best international work are 
the people who do the best national work. The 
individuals who are not prepared to spend time 
and service and effort to make their own country 
better and nobler, are going to do nothing for 
internationalism that is worth doing. The heart 



Reconstruction 291 

that finds nothing to love and work for in its 
neighbour is the heart that has nothing to bring 
to the whole world. 

Again, there must be reparation by the enemy. 
We cannot reconstruct this world rightly if we 
do not enforce justice. A nation that has broken 
every international and human law is a nation 
that must be made to pay for its crimes as far 
as human justice can secure it. 

Our six thousand murdered merchant seamen, 
the thousands of passengers they have killed, the 
civilians they have bombed, are marshalled 
against them, and the horrors of their frightful- 
ness, deliberately planned and carried out 
against the peoples they have held in bondage, 
their refusal to even feed properly their pris- 
oners and captive people — are we to be told to 
reconstruct a world without reparation for 
these and their other crimes? 

We shall have a reconstructed world with 
right foundations, only when the nations know 
that justice is throned internationally, and that 
every crime is to be judged and punished. 



292 Women and War Work 

There can be no new world without living 
faith, without real religion. A cheap and senti- 
mental hunianitarism is no substitute for real 
faith — philosophies that seem adequate in ordi- 
nary times are poor things when the soul of man 
stands stripped of all its trappings and faces 
death and suffering and watches agonies. Then 
the abiding eternal soul knows its own reality 
and its oneness with the Divine and eternal, and 
the sacrifice of Christ is a real living thing — 
and in the men's sacrifice they are very near 
to Him. 

So the Churches are being tested, too, in this 
great crisis, and in a reconstructed world we 
shall want Churches that carry the message of 
Christianity with a clearer and firmer voice, but 
that is the task of all believers. We cannot cast 
the duty of making the Church a living witness 
on our priests alone — it is our work, and unless 
our faith goes into everything we do, it is no 
use. People who profess a faith, and carefully 
shut it up in a compartment of their lives, so 
that it has no real connection with their work, 



Reconstruction 293 

are worse than honest doubters — because they 
betray what they profess. 

So reconstruction rests upon great spiritual 
tasks and values, and upon the willingness and 
ability of the nations to carry these out. 

In our country, our political parties are going 
to be changed and reconstructed. The Labour 
Party has already made a big appeal to "brain 
and hand workers," and has announced its 
scheme of re-organization. 

One definite result of the war in the minds of 
the people of our country is the definite mental 
discarding of state socialism of the bureaucratic 
kind as a conceivable system of government. We 
have seen bureaucracy at work to a great extent, 
and shall undoubtedly have to continue control 
in many ways after peace comes, but we do not 
like it. Socialism will have to go on to new 
lines of thought and development if it wishes to 
achieve anything — and the most interesting 
thought and schemes are on the lines of Guild 
Socialism. 



294 Women and War Work 

How the great Liberal and Unionist Parties 
will emerge, we cannot say — but this we know, 
they will be different. We have a new electorate, 
more men and the women, and the opinion and 
needs of the women will undoubtedly affect our 
political reconstruction. Most of us, in the war, 
have entirely ceased to care for party; even the 
most fierce of partisans have changed, and the 
"party appeal," in itself, will be of little account 
in our country. 

I feel sure we shall scrutinize measures and 
men and programmes more carefully, and the 
work of educating our women will be part of 
the women's great tasks in reconstruction. 

Our ability to reconstruct and renew rests fun- 
damentally upon our financial condition— even 
the power to make the best peace terms rests 
upon it. Crippled countries cannot stand out 
for the best terms, so finance is all-important. 

The democratic nature of our loans is all- 
important, too. We have had people suggesting 
that these loans would be repudiated — a sugges- 
tion that is not only absurd, but is humorous 



Reconstruction 295 

when one realizes that about ten million of our 
people have invested in them. To get a House of 
Commons elected that would repudiate these 
loans would be a difficult task. 

The widespread nature of the loans is sound 
for the people and the Government, and will help 
us not only to win the war, but, what is still more 
important, "to win the peace." We have in this 
struggle paid more and better wages to our people 
than ever before, conditions have been improved, 
masses of our people have led a fuller existence 
than ever before. We want to make these and 
still better conditions permanent. We cannot 
do that by a military victory only — we can only 
do it by finishing financially sound, and the man 
or woman who saves now and invests is one of 
our soundest reconstructors. 

In the readjustments in industry that must 
come there will be temporary displacements, and 
the money invested will be invaluable to those 
affected. In our great task of reorganizing in- 
dustries, of renovating and repairing, of building 
up new works and adding to our productiveness, 



29fi Women and War Work 

finance is all-important. We shall need large 
sums for the development of our industry, for the 
transferring of war work back to peace pursuits, 
for the opening up of new industries and work, 
for the development of trade abroad and the self- 
ish using up of resources that could be conserved, 
makes the work harder — might even, if extrava- 
gantly large, cripple us seriously at the end of 
this struggle 

The sacrifices of our men can achieve military 
victory, but weakness and self-indulgence at 
home can take the fruits of their victories away. 

Those who are working and saving in our War 
Savings Movement are so convinced of its value, 
not only to the state, but to the individual, and 
for the character of our people, that they have 
expressed the very strongest conviction that it 
should go on after the War, and it will probably 
remain in our reconstruction. 

We have also urged the wisdom of saving for 
the children's education and for dots for daugh- 
ters, so that our young women may have some 
money in emergencies, or something of their own 



Reconstruction 297 

on marriage, and both of these are being done. 

The great problem of education bulks very 
large in our reconstruction schemes. A new Edu- 
cation Bill for England and Wales has been pre- 
pared by Mr. Fisher — and his appointment is in 
itself a sign of our new attitude. He is Minister 
of Education and is really an educationist, hav- 
ing been Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University 
when given the appointment. His Bill puts an 
end to that stigma on English education, the 
half-time system in Lancashire, and raises the 
age for leaving school to what it has been in 
Scotland for some years — sixteen years of age. 
It provides greater opportunities for secondary 
and technical training and improves education 
in every way. Its passage, or the passage of a 
still better Bill, is essential for any real work in 
reconstruction. 

There are other schemes of education being 
planned and considered, and women are working 
with men on the education committee of the 
Ministry of Reconstruction. 



298 Women and War Work 

The land question is all-important in recon- 
struction. We have fixed a minimum price for 
wheat for five years, as well as minimum wages 
for the labourers on land, men and women, and 
we have schemes and land for the settlement of 
soldiers. It is safe to predict that agriculture 
will be better looked after than it was before the 
war, and that we have learned a valuable lesson 
on food production, and the value of being more 
self-supporting. 

There are people who talk airily and foolishly 
of "revolutions after the war" — of great labour 
troubles, of exorbitant and impossible demands, 
of irreconcilable quarrels. These people are 
themselves the creators and begettors of trouble, 
and mischievous in the highest degree. They 
belong, though they are much less attractive, to 
the same category as the person who tells you 
that the moral regeneration of the world is 
coming from this great war. 

The "revolutionists" have to learn that there 
is no need to have any such crises happen, that 
they can only happen if we are foolish beyond 



Reconstruction 299 

belief and conception — for we have learned in 
this war how great and ample is the common 
meeting ground of all of us, how impossible it 
is for anyone to believe that we, who have fought 
together, suffered and lost together, while our 
men have died together, cannot find in consid- 
eration of claims enough common sense and 
wisdom to prevent any such disaster. 

And one wonders where the people are going 
to be found who are going to be so unjust to 
the workers as to provide any reason for such 
dangers to be feared, for we know one thing in 
the war, that in the trenches, on the sea, behind 
the trenches and carrying on at home, the 
workers have done the greater part — and they, 
in their turn, know all others have borne their 
share. Out of such common knowledge and the 
consciousness that the practical work of democ- 
racy is to raise its people more and more, we 
shall have not revolution, but evolution of the 
best kind. And the moral regeneration of the 
world will come if we reconstruct the one thing 
that matters most and that is fundamental to all 



300 Women and War Work 

— ourselves — and it will not come if we do not. 

When one has said everything there is to be 
said of schemes and hopes of reconstruction — 
about the schemes for better homes, and a great 
housing scheme is wisely one of the foundation 
schemes of our reconstruction, for which plans 
are now being prepared, about schemes for the 
care of children, about schemes for endowment 
of motherhood, which are exercising the minds 
of many of our women, you are back again to 
the individual. When you think of education 
schemes, and schemes for teaching national 
service to the young, of work to teach care and 
thrift, you are back again to the problem of 
creating character. 

When you go into the great world of industry 
and its problems, of care of the workers in health 
and sickness, of securing justice and full oppor- 
tunities, of developing and wisely using our 
resources, again you return to the individual. 

When you want to make the art and beauty of 
life accessible to all, you come back to the ques- 



Reconstruction 301 

tion as to the individual's desire for it and ap- 
preciation of it. 

Schemes in theory may be perfect — reconstruc- 
tion may be planned without a flaw — but what 
does that help if we as individuals are blind 
and selfish? 

The regeneration of the world cannot come 
from the sacrifice of our men alone, or even of 
some of us at home. The few may save countries 
and do great things, but the work of reconstruc- 
tion rests on everybody. Nations are made up 
of individuals, and a nation cannot hope for 
moral and social regeneration except through 
individual self-denial, self-sacrifice and service. 

It is in our own hearts and our own minds 
that the great task of reconstruction must be 
done. 

The greatest task of reconstruction for most 
of us is to make all our actions worthy of our 
highest self — to bring to the problems that con- 
front us, not one detached and prejudiced bit of 
us, but the whole mind and spirit of ourselves — 
the best of us always in unity. 



302 Women and War Work 

That is life's greatest task, and calls for all 
we have to give, and all we are. There lies true 
reconstruction and the hope of all the world. 






APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

American Women's War Relief Fund, 123 Vic- 
toria Street, London, S. W. I. 

Association of Infant Consultation and Schools 
for Mothers, 4 Tavistock Square, London, 
W. C. I. 

British Women's Hospital, Bond Street, London, 
W. I. 

Glove Waistcoat Society, 75 Chancery Lane, 
E. C. 4. 

Ministry of Food, Mrs. Pember Reeves, Mrs. C. S. 
Peel, Grosvenor House, W. I. 

National Federation of Women's Workers. 
Women's Trade Union League, 34 Mecklenburgh 

Square, W. C. I. 
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, 

Scottish Women's Hospitals, 62 Oxford Street, 
W. C. I. 

20 



306 Women and War Work 

Women's Interests Committee, 62 Oxford 

Street, W. C. I. 
National War Savings Committee, Salisbury 

Square, E. C. 4. 
National Union of Women Workers (Women 

Patrols), Parliament Mansions, Victoria 

Street, S. W. I. 
Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, St. James 

Palace, S. W. I. 
National Food Economy League, 3 Woodstock 

Street, Oxford Street, W. C. I. 
Prisoners of War, Help Committee, 4 Thurloe 

Place, Brompton Eoad, W. 
Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, Devonshire 

House, W. 1. 
Women's Branch, Food Production Department, 

Board of Agriculture, 72 Victoria Street, 

S. W. I. 
Women's Service Bureau, L. S. W. S., 58 Victoria 

Street, S. W. 1. 
Women's National Land Service Corps, 50 Upper 

Baker Street, W. 1. 



Appendix 307 

Women Police Service, St. Stephens House, 

Westminster, S. W. I. 
Young Women's Christian Association, 25 

George Street, Hanover Square, W. 1. 
V. A. D., Lady Amphtill, Devonshire House, 

W. 1. 



MINISTRY OF MUNITIONS 



Publications of Health of Munition 
Workers' Committee 
The following Memoranda have been prepared 
by the Committee and issued: 
No. 1 — Sunday Labour. 
No. 2 — Welfare Supervision. 
No. 3 — Industrial Canteens. 
No. 4 — Employment of Women. 
No. 5 — Hours of Work. 
No. 6 — Canteen Construction and Equipment 

(Appendix to No. 3). 
No. 7 — Industrial Fatigue and Its Causes. 



308 Women and War W t ork 

No. 8 — Special Industrial Diseases. 

No. 9 — Ventilation and Lighting of Munition 

Factories and Workshops. 
No. 10 — Sickness and Injury. 
No. 11 — Investigation of Workers' Food and 

Suggestions as to Dietary. ( Report by 

Leonard E. Hill, F.R.S.) 
No. 12 — Statistical Information Concerning 

Output in Relation to Hours of 

Work. (Report by H. M. Vernon, 

M.D.) 
No. 13 — Juvenile Employment. 
No. 14 — Washing Facilities and Baths. 
No. 15 — The Effect of Industrial Conditions 

Upon Eyesight. 
No. 16 — Medical Certificates for Munition 

Workers, 
also, Feeding the Munition Worker. 

Published by H. M. Stationery Office, 
London, W. C. 



A/'OU have read this book and you 
will agree with the Publisher 
that it ought to have an immediate 
and wide distribution. Will you help 
him to eliminate wasteful advertising 
by sending the post card enclosed, 
giving your opinion of the book to 
one of your friends 




OINCE you have probably seen the 
^ imprint of G. Arnold Shaw on a 
book for the first time, will you spend 
a few minutes scanning the following 
pages, to discover what the best criti- 
cal opinion is upon other recent Shaw 
publications. They are intended for 
the discriminating few as our trade- 
mark, "Aere Perennius ,, — "more last- 
ing than brass," indicates. 



Books by Members of the 
University Lecturers Association 

A significant proof of the growth of the Association's 
influence in recent years is afforded by the fact that our 
Secretary, Mr. G. Arnold Shaw, has been enabled to enter 
the publishing field successfully. We reverse thus the plan 
of campaign of the ordinary lecture bureau which is usually 
impressed with the possibilities of a man who has won fame 
as an author rather than as a lecturer; we discover that a 
man is a first rate lecturer and then we proceed to make him 
an author — also of the front rank as the reviews quoted 
below show. 

ART AND ARCHITECTURE 

By IAN C. HANNAH, F.S.A. 

Some Irish Religious Houses 50 

Irish Cathedrals 50 

By I. B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN 

The Need for Art in Life. (Third Thousand) . . .75 
"One of the greatest little books of the Age." 

— Boston Transcript. 
Architectures of European Religions, Illustrated . 2.00 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

The interest of these books depend not merely upon the 
interesting personality of the famous lecturer and the equally 
fascinating personalities of his two brothers, but also on the 
exquisite literary style to which the critics have paid such 
eloquent testimony. 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS AND LLEWELLYN POWYS 
Confessions of Two Brothers 1.50 

By THEODORE FRANCIS POWYS 

The Soliloquy of a Hermit 1.00 

This book can be compared to Amiel's Journal in the 
opinion of a prominent London publisher. 



ESSAYS AND CRITICISM 

The essays contained in the following books deal with the 
best lecture subjects of our various members; they are spe- 
cially recommended to those who wish to pursue further the 
study outlined in our lecture courses. 

By I. B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN 

The Need for Art in Life 75 

"The thoughtful man who reads it will feel that a new 
classic has been added to the world's literature." — 
Boston Transcript. 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

Visions and Revisions, A Book of Literary Devotions 2.00 

"Seventeen essays remarkable for the omission of all 
that is tedious and cumbersome in literary appre- 
ciations." — Review of Reviews. 

Suspended Judgments, Essays on Books and Sen- 
sations 2.00 

"Anything written by John Cowper Powys is arrest- 
ing and thrilling. This is superlatively true of his 
essays in literary criticism." — Cincinnati Enquirer. 

"A book of infinite delight to the book lover, for few 
present day writers have the ability in the same 
measure as Mr. Powys to express every shade of 
impression and sensation, and his ripe judgment 
will appeal to all." — Boston Globe. 

One Hundred Best Books, with commentary and an 

essay on Books and Reading 75 

"Of each of the hundred books he gives a brief, 
sparkling, thoroughly informative and delightfully 
interesting critical view. If book reviewers could 
do the job as well as Mr. Powys, the book pages 
would be the most popular part of a newspaper." 

— Evening Telegram, Philadelphia. 
Ill 



FICTION 

Critics of literature seldom succeed as creative artists and 
so it is specially remarkable that the highest authorities give 
even more unqualified praise to the fiction of our members 
than to their essays. We need not emphasize further our lack 
of appreciation for the literary value of "best-sellers"; our 
aim has not been to produce topical tracts for the times but 
novels that will survive. It is more to us that competent 
critics should compare Mr. Powys' fiction to that of Hardy, 
Dostoievsky and Emily Bronte than that the public should 
buy it by the hundred thousand. Those who are not con- 
vinced that "you can place 'Wood and Stone* unhesitatingly 
at the side of Dostoievsky's masterpieces" should reflect that 
this is not the over-enthusiasm of "America's newest Pub- 
lisher" but the verdict of a London publisher who has long 
held a pre-eminent position; it is therefore peculiarly satis- 
factory to point out that our first novel "Wood and Stone" 
was 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE IMPRINT OF 
WILLIAM HEINEMANN G. ARNOLD SHAW 




HI /EKL PtRLmiUS 



IN LONDON 



IN NEW YORK 



IV 



FICTION 

By IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH 

Quaker-Born, A Romance of the Great War . . .1.35 

By I. B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN 

The Child of the Moat, A story of 1557 for girls . .1.25 

"Of such absorbing interest and literary merit that it 
will doubtless take its place among the classics." — 
Art and Archaeology. 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

Wood and Stone, A Romance reminiscent of the 

great Dostoievsky 1.75 

"One of the best novels of the year." — Evening Post, 
New York. 

"His mastery of language, his knowledge of human 
impulses, his interpretation of the forces of nature 
and of the power of inanimate objects over human 
beings, all pronounce him a writer of no mean 
rank. He can express philosophy in terms of nar- 
rative without prostituting his art; he can suggest 
an answer without drawing a moral; with a clearer 
vision he could stand among the masters in literary 
achievement." — Boston Transcript. 

"Psychologically speaking, it is one of the most re- 
markable pieces of fiction ever written." — Chicago 
Tribune. 

Rodmoor, A Romance of the old Thrilling Romantic 

Order 1.50 

"It is so far above the average English and American 
fiction that one can well exempt it from the neces- 
sity of following the rules. He has intellect, he has 
taste, he has a sure instinct for what is aesthetically 
fine. These qualities in themselves make his 'Rod- 
moor* a novel of exceptional distinction." — Boston 
Transcript. 

"Without exception the most exquisitely written 
novel of the year." — Atlantic Monthly. 



HISTORY AND TRAVEL 

By IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH, M.A., D.C.L., F.S.A. 

Eastern Asia, A history 2.50 

Capitals of the Northlands, A Tale of ten cities . 2.00 
The Heart of East Anglia (A History of Norwich) . 2.00 
The Berwick and Lothian Coast 2.00 

POETRY 

By I. B. STOUGHTON HOLBORN 

Children of Fancy 2.00 

"A Notable volume of Verse." — Boston Globe. 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

Wolf's-bane 1.25 

"We hesitate to say how many years it is neces- 
sary to go back in order to find their equals in 
sheer poetic originality." — Evening Post, New 
York. 

Mandragora 1.25 

THE WAR 

By IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH 

Arms and the Map 1.25 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

The War and Culture 60 

"More weighty than many of the more pretentious 
treatises on the subject." — The Nation. 

Any of the above books sent post-free on receipt of price by 



G.Arnold Shaw ,^jfe^ Publisher. N'ewYork 



VI 



Recommended by the A. L. A. Booklist 
Specially suitable for Schools and Colleges 

ARMS AND THE MAP 

A STUDY IN NATIONALITIES AND FRONTIERS 
By IAN CAMPBELL HANNAH, M.A., D.C.L. 

i2mo, 236 pages, $1.25 net 
This work, which has had a large sale in England, will be in- 
valuable when the terms of peace begin to be seriously dis- 
cussed. Every European people is reviewed and the evolution 
of the different nationalities is carefully explained. Particular 
reference is made to the so-called " Irredentist " lands, whose 
people want to be under a different flag from that under which 
they live. 

The colonizing methods of all the nations are dealt with, and 
especially the place in the sun that Germany hasn't got. 

New York Times says: " Such a volume as this will undoubtedly be 
of value in presenting . . . facts of great importance in a brief and in- 
teresting fashion." 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle says: "It is hard to find a man who presents 
his arguments so broad-mindedly as Dr. Hannah. His spirit is that of a 
catholic scholar striving earnestly to find the truth and present it 
sympathetically.' ' 

Philadelphia North American says : " It is in no sense history, but 
rather a preparatory effort to mark broadly the outlines of any future 
peace settlement that would have even a fighting chance of permanency. 
Only in perusing a critical study of this character can the vast problems 
of post-bellum imminence be fully apprehended." 

Philadelphia Press says: " His work is immensely readable and par- 
ticularly interesting at this time and will throw much fresh light on the 
situation." 

OTHER BOOKS BY IAN C. HANNAH 

Eastern Asia, A History $2.50 

Capitals of the Northlands (A tale of ten cities) 2.00 

The Berwick and Lothian Coast (in the County Coast Series) 2.00 

The Heart of East Anglia (A History of Norwich) 2.00 

Some Irish Religious Houses (Reprinted from the Archae- 
ological Journal) 50c 

Irish Cathedrals (Reprinted from the Archceologkal Journal 50c 

G. ARNOLD SHAW ^^U^S^SZ 

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL NEW YORK 

VII 



Recommended by the A. L. A. Booklist 

Adopted for required reading by the Pittsburgh 
Teachers Reading Circle 

VISIONS AND REVISIONS 

A BOOK OF LITERARY DEVOTIONS 
By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

8vo, 298 pp. Half White Cloth with Blue Fabriano Paper Sides, 

$2.00 net 

This volume of essays on Great Writers by the well-known 
lecturer was the first of a series of three books with the same 
purpose as the author's brilliant lectures ; namely, to enable one 
to discriminate between the great and the mediocre in ancient 
and modern literature : the other two books being " One Hundred 
Best Books " and " Suspended Judgments." 

Within a year of its publication, four editions of " Visions 
and Revisions" were printed — an extraordinary record con- 
sidering that it was only the second book issued by a new pub- 
lisher. The value of the book to the student and its interest 
for the general reader are guaranteed by the international fame 
of the author as an interpreter of great literature and by the 
enthusiastic reviews it received from the American Press. 

Review of Reviews, New York : " Seventeen essays . . . remarkable 
for the omission of all that is tedious and cumbersome in literary ap- 
preciations, such as pedantry, muckraking, theorizing, and, in particular, 
constructive criticism." 

Book News Monthly, Philadelphia : * ' Not one line in the entire book 
that is not tense with thought and feeling. With all readers who crave 
anental stimulation . . . ' Visions and Revisions ' is sure of a great and 
enthusiastic appreciation." 

The Nation and the Evening Post, New York : ' ■ Their imagery is 
bright, clear and frequently picturesque. The rhythm falls with a pleas- 
ing cadence on the ear." 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "A volume of singularly acute and readable 
literary criticism." ' 

Chicago Herald: " An essayist at once scholarly, human and charm- 
ing is John Cowper Powys. . . . Almost every page carries some arresting 
thought, quaintly appealing phrase, or picture spelling passage." 

Reedy' s Mirror, St. Louis: " Powys keeps you wide awake in the 
reading because he's thinking and writing from the standpoint of life, 
not of theory or system. Powys has a system but it is hardly a system. 
It is a sort of surrender to the revelation each writer has to make." 

Kansas City Star: " John Cowper Powys' essays are wonderfully il- 
luminating. . . . Mr. Powys writes in at least a semblance of the Grand 
Style." 

"Visions and Revisions" contains the following essays: — 
Rabelais Dickens Thomas Hardy 

Dante Goethe Walter Pater 

Shakespeare Matthew Arnold Dostoievsky 

El Greco Shelley Edgar Allan Poe 

Milton Keats Walt Whitman 

Charles Lamb Nietzsche Conclusion 

G. ARNOLD SHAW Publisher to the University 

Lecturers Association 

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL NEW YORK 

VIII 



SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS 

ESSAYS ON BOOKS AND SENSATIONS 

By JOHN COWPER POWYS 

8vo. about 400 pages. Half cloth with blue Fabriano paper 

sides $2.00 net 

The Book News Monthly said of "Visions and Revisions": 

" Not one line in the entire book that is not tense with thought 
and feeling." 

The author of " Visions and Revisions " says of this new book 
of essays: 

" In * Suspended Judgments ' I have sought to express with 
more deliberation and in a less spasmodic manner than in 'Vi- 
sions,' the various after-thoughts and reactions both intellectual 
and sensational which have been produced in me, in recent 
years, by the re-reading of my favorite writers. I have tried 
to capture what might be called the 'psychic residuum' of earlier 
fleeting impressions and I have tried to turn this emotional after- 
math into a permanent contribution — at any rate for those of 
similar temperament — to the psychology of literary apprecia- 
tion. 

" To the purely critical essays in this volume I have added a 
certain number of others dealing with what, in popular parlance, 
are called 'general topics,' but what in reality are always — in 
the most extreme sense of that word — personal to the mind 
reacting from them. I have called the book ' Suspended Judg- 
ments ' because while one lives, one grows, and while one grows, 
one waits and expects." 

SUSPENDED JUDGMENTS CONTAINS THESE ESSAYS: 

THE ART OF DISCRIMINATION IN LITERATURE 



Montaigne 


Emily Bronte 


Pascal 


Joseph Conrad 


Voltaire 


Henry James 


Rousseau 


Oscar Wilde 


Balzac 


Aubrey Beardsley 


Victor Hugo 


. • c * • 


de Maupassant 


Friends 


Anatole France 


Religion 


Paul Verlaine 


Love 


Remy de Gourmont 


Cities 


William Blake 


Morality 


Byron 


Education 


G. ARNOLD SHAW 


Publisher to the University 
Lecturers Association 


GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL NEW YORK 



IX 



One Hundred 

Best Books 

With Commentary and An Essay on 

BOOKS AND READING 
By John Cowper Powys 



This list is designed to supply the need of 
persons who wish to acquire a general knowl- 
edge of such books in world-literature as are 
at once exciting and thrilling to the ordinary 
mind and written in the style of the masters. 
It recognizes the fact that modern people are 
most interested in modern books; but it 
recognizes also that such books, to be worthy 
of this interest, must uphold the classical 
tradition of manner and form. 

80 Pages 12mo. 75 Cents 

419 3 x 6 7© *' 



G.Arnold Shaw .^ettte^ Publisher. NewYork 



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